


The Accidental Villain

by plainclothesdisaster



Category: H.I.V.E. Series - Mark Walden, Jack Blank Adventures - Matt Myklusch
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-10
Updated: 2016-12-09
Packaged: 2018-04-25 17:57:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 33,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4970764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plainclothesdisaster/pseuds/plainclothesdisaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Otto Malpense gets caught, he has to make an unlikely friend in order to get back home. Oh, and to save the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Stowaway

Otto woke up in a helicopter over the ocean. Again.

He blinked slowly as his eyes adjusted, his head throbbing as he tried to remember what happened. Outside a small porthole the water far below rushed by at a blazing speed. Another kid sat across from him in what looked like a storage hold. It was all rather familiar really, until Otto realized with a groan that he was the only one of them with handcuffs on his wrists. They’d got him.

He couldn’t help but let out a chuckle. 

The other kid frowned. “What’s so funny?”

“Oh nothing,” Otto said. “It’s just the last time I was kidnapped and flown to some undisclosed location, it was done by a professional assassin, not a bunch of kids.” 

He tugged on the straps binding him to the side of the jet with his cuffed hands. They didn't budge. It seemed he was, for all intents and purposes, a prisoner. How annoying. 

“Is this really necessary?” He held up the cuffs.

“A precaution. You and your friends know how to put up a real fight.” The kid replied, face unreadable. 

Otto smiled. While he was glad that his friends, by the looks of it, had gotten away, he really could have used a little help from a master lock picker or a well trained-fighter right about now. But it wasn’t the first time he’d have to manage on his own.

He reached out his senses and connected with the helicopter’s systems and was shocked at what he found. The helicopter, if it could even be called that, had to be at least ten years more advanced than even the latest Shroud models. The specs on the tech were simply off the charts. It didn’t seem possible. 

Otto hid his surprise as he took a quick look through the navigation system. He pinpointed their location to somewhere out way in the middle of nowhere– not too far from Hive. Despite the hyper-advanced tech, it would have been easy enough to set a course for home. But he figured that the aircraft full of freaks would not take kindly to a sudden change in flight path, nor would Nero be pleased if six crime fighting teens were spontaneously chauffeured to his secret island, that was, if Otto could even make it that far. 

Looked like he’d just have to go along for the ride for now.

“So you gonna at least tell me where we're going?” Otto asked.

“Somewhere safe. For now,” the other kid said quietly, hesitating a moment before adding, “You should be going to jail.”

“Ah right. I forget that people don't like it very much when important things get stolen. But this is the first time I've been kidnapped for it,” Otto replied, cheeky. Despite the fact that this kid was being rather nice about this whole kidnapping thing (minus the handcuffs), Otto had no intention of giving him any reason to think he’d be anything but uncooperative. 

The kid scowled. “It’s obvious no normal jail could hold you. But there are prisons for people like us.”

“People like us?” Otto raised an eyebrow. 

“People with superpowers.” 

Otto started to laugh, but the kid stared at him, straight faced. He wasn’t kidding.

Otto let his face fall into a frown. “You know, I haven't ever really thought about myself in relation to the s-word before.” He waved his hand noncommittally. 

“They're more common than you think,” the kid replied. 

That certainly was an interesting statement to just be throwing out so casually, but yet, strangely enough, not completely unbelievable. Even before his run-in with this kid and his uniquely talented friends, Otto had seen plenty of stuff that qualified as capital S superpowers, his own abilities included. And after seeing first hand what this kid and his band of misfits could do, well, there really was no doubting it. 

“So you're going to throw me in supervillain jail? For one little museum heist? That's hardly fair,” Otto said, mentally kicking himself for getting caught despite his joking tone. 

“You should be going to jail. But you're not. The others don’t know you’re here,” the kid said, fidgeting in his seat.

“Oh really?” Otto replied, raising an eyebrow. “To be frank, that sounds like a recipe for disaster.” 

“Yeah. It does.” The kid gave him an accusatory stare. “But if I told them I’d caught you, they wouldn’t let me figure out what you were doing in Shanghai stealing an artifact that has way more power than you should really know about.” 

Otto looked back at him blankly. He ruled out the chance that this kid belonged to some new villain organization come to seek retribution or to control his powers or some other typical scenario– his persona was all wrong for that, much too goody-good and definitely not intimidating enough. But then who was this supposedly super powered kid? Who did he work for? What did he want from him?

But the biggest question really was why, if this was some kind of justice thing, would this kid keep a him a secret? Was this some kind of next level psychological warfare? Or was this kid really, in some convoluted backhanded way, trying to help him out?

It was too soon to tell. 

“What's your name then?” Otto asked. Not a question he would normally pose to his captors, but this kid was anything but normal.

The kid didn’t answer right away.

“Jack,” he said, finally, “Jack Blank.”

Otto smiled a crooked smile, wondering just how deep of a mess he’d gotten himself into this time. “Nice to meet you Jack. You can call me Otto.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright kiddos, buckle up. I loved both of these (admittedly very very obscure) series and couldn’t help myself but start dreaming up crossovers– honestly, they're so perfect for each other it's hard not to. Needless to say I got a little carried away, to the tune of a sixteen-chapter, finished (that’s right– finished) fan fiction miniature epic. It’s not perfect and it’s not polished, but I can’t just let 25k plus words sit here in my computer now can I? Expect a new chapter each week.


	2. The Outsider

”Wait here.”

That was all Otto got as Jack unceremoniously shoved him in a broom closet. After they’d landed, Jack had come for him after the rest of his gang of superpowered wunderkinds had disembarked and shuffled him off to the side of the hangar. The closet, supposedly his new cell, had a few shelves with mechanical miscellany, and yes, in fact, an actual broom. This day kept getting weirder.

But did Jack just expect him to stick around with the looming threat of supervillain jail? Fat chance. A closet was neither a graceful nor effective way of keeping him a prisoner, and frankly an insult to his capabilities. All Otto had to do now was pop the lock on the door, _borrow_ one of the hi-tech looking jets in the hangar, and be on his merry way back to HIVE, curiosity be damned. 

Otto extended his still-cuffed hands toward the locking mechanism on the electronic door. He reached out to unlock it but instantly ran up against a pretty wicked encryption. Frustrated, he scowled and lowered his hands. The code was almost alien in its advancement. Guess the broom closet wasn’t such an insult after all. 

Good thing he had a sentient supercomputer riding around in his head.

“Wanna bet on how long it'll take us to break it?” he asked HIVEmind. “I give it ten minutes tops.”

_By my estimate it will take four point seven five minutes to-_

“Perfect.”

Otto focused his abilities on the lock again with HIVEmind on the assist. This time, the door didn’t stand a chance. He felt the code shaping itself into place the way he wanted. It was working. 

Then, without warning, a massive bolt of pain struck his head. He collapsed to the floor, his whole body twitching and seizing uncontrollably. All thoughts of cracking the lock scattered as an invisible electric shock ripped its way through him, like the prickling feeling when your leg falls asleep multiplied by ten thousand.

_HIVEmind, what’s happening?_ he asked in his head. His mouth wasn't cooperating. He tried to yell but nothing came out. Digital information bombarded him, screaming through his mind’s eye. He tried to shut himself off from the influx of incoherent data but it wouldn’t stop. Layers and layers of code washed over him like a flood as his body convulsed. Mentally he tried to stop the cascade but he couldn’t fight it, it was too strong. _What’s going on? Why can’t I stop it?_

_#*( &()*(*(&$(*)&@#!!*&(*)&@(*%&!!!!!_ HIVEmind responded in screeching gibberish.

Then Otto blinked and suddenly he couldn't see. His vision stayed completely black for a moment, and then everything was numbers and code. It was like when he went into the digital mindscape, but even less manageable than usual. Rather than forming into a solid figure, instead he felt like he was falling into an endless void. Panic rose in his throat. It felt like he was dissolving, like everything around him was collapsing into nothing. 

He reached out with his abilities, trying to feel the world around him, anything at all, desperate.

Then, nothing.

– - - 

“Those villains won’t be able to outrun us for long.” The look of frustrated determination on Allergra’s face was enough to send shivers down Jack’s spine. He jogged to catch up with her, Skerren, Zhi, and Trea where they stood in the courtyard outside the hangar debriefing with Stendeval. He was careful to avoid his mentor’s gaze as he came up beside the group.

“We could have continued our pursuit uninterrupted had Jack not insisted that we return,” Skerren said, hands hovering over his swords, shooting Jack a particularly dirty look.

Jack folded his arms in defense. “I told you, the artifact is more dangerous than we anticipated,” he said, turning to address Stendeval, “And since it was taken by a very skilled infiltration team before we could secure it, we decided to return to regroup.”

“ _We_ meaning Jack, since he’s the only one who can fly the plane,” Zhi said under his breath. 

The return trip to the Imagine Nation had been a hard sell for sure, but he had to make everyone believe that he had his reasons. Reasons that didn’t include a white-haired boy currently stashed in a broom closet. 

“I don’t doubt the wisdom of Jack’s decision, unusual as it is,” Stendeval said, raising an inquisitive eyebrow in Jack’s direction. “Now all you can do is focus on gathering your resources to prepare to continue the search.”

Stendeval’s knowing look was as unreadable as always. Jack knew that keeping secrets from his mentor was a risky– and possibly futile– effort. Nevertheless, Stendeval made no mention of Otto (if he even knew about Jack’s stowaway), and neither did Jack. And he hoped that they could keep it that way.

Skerren grumbled. “We don’t need to be wasting time here preparing. They were just a bunch of kids.” 

“And what’s that make us?” Trea snarked.

“You have to admit, it was pretty weird,” Allegra said. “They were supposed to just be normals. But they practically beat us. Where did they even come from?”

“Not here, that’s for sure,” Jack replied. “I checked the immigration files on the way over. No sign of any of them.”

Jack had wondered if maybe Otto was like him– someone born in the Imagine Nation that had grown up outside it, unaware of his supernatural inheritance. It would explain the existence of Otto’s powers, at least. But his search turned up nothing. Otto was an outsider through and through.

“Indeed these operatives make for an interesting development,” Stendeval said. “It seems this mission might be quite a bit more complex than we anticipated, even for your solo examinations. Your mentors I’m sure will be willing to assist–”

“No,” Jack replied, maybe a little too quickly, “We can do this on our own. We’ll get the artifact back I promise.”

He accepted his friends’ silence as a terse agreement. None of them wanted their first real solo mission to end with getting bailed out by their ever-watchful superiors. 

Stendeval nodded. “I’ll leave it to you, then.”

Jack tried not to show his relief. He thought about spilling the beans right then and there. It certainly would be easier. But he bit his tongue. He couldn’t give Otto up just yet.

Jack’s brain still tingled from their first encounter. Maybe it was just because he got to experience Otto’s power first hand that he was so reluctant to immediately categorize him as a bad guy. Sure, Otto and his crew had been stealing (well, had _stolen_ ) the very artifact that Jack and his friends had gone to secure. Considering what the suspected nature of the artifact really was, it was more than enough to condemn them all as seriously up to no good. 

But there was something about Otto and his team that made Jack reconsider. It could be the fact that they were just kids, but it was probably because they had, as far as Jack could tell, nearly identical powers. Sure, it wasn’t uncommon for multiple heroes to have flying or telekinetic abilities, but in all his time in the Imagine Nation, Jack had never encountered anyone else with control over machines.

And with everyone jumping to conclusions, Jack couldn’t help but be reminded of a time not so long ago when the majority of the Imagine Nation condemned him as evil due to nothing but unfortunate circumstance.

“Well I’m going to go set up some equipment to see if we can’t track the artifact’s unique signature,” Trea said. “Jack, you coming?”

Jack opened his mouth to reply when he picked up a peculiar sensation coming from the hangar, like a mechanical disturbance, slowly getting stronger. His mouth went dry. That couldn’t be good. 

“I forgot I, uh, left something in the jet,” he said, trying to hide his urgency as he backed away from the group. “You go on ahead. I’ll catch up in a bit.”

Jack didn’t see the dubious looks on his friend’s faces. He’d already turned and started half-jogging back to the hangar, face fraught with determination. 

– - -

Otto’s eyes flew open and he found himself laying flat out on the cement floor, covered in sweat. The small room was pitch dark. The overhead light was out. Everything was silent except for a quiet buzzing and hissing.

“HIVEmind?” he asked tentatively, a major headache settling in the back of his skull as he awkwardly pushed himself up into a sitting position with his cuffed hands. 

_Otto. I'm detecting a problem with the internal systems of this device._

HIVEmind meant the device in his head, he realized with shock. “No kidding. What happened?”

_I believe that you've just experienced what can be described as a glitch. I also believe that some kind of virus is causing this. I will attempt to fully diagnose the problem now._

A glitch? Was it even possible for him to get a glitch? He rubbed the side of his head, still tender from the fall. He supposed ‘glitch’ really was the best way to describe what had just happened to the tiny organic supercomputer lodged in his head. Truthfully, he hadn’t spent much time probing into the inner workings of the device. Maybe he should have, but the prospect just wasn’t all that palatable considering the device’s original intent. 

“Great. Fantastic. I'll– I'll inspect the damage out here.” He stood up on shaky legs.

And he did truly mean damage. With a gentle push, he swung open the door. The locking mechanism sparked and emitted a thin trail of smoke, the source of the faint buzzing noise. Whoops. Out in the hangar, everything was dark and silent, from the overhead lights to the jets themselves. Otto tried to make a connection with anything at all, but it was no use. Everything was completely dead.

A nervous pit formed in the bottom of his stomach as he walked out into the expanse of the hangar. Tentatively looking for a way out, he wondered, had he, or rather, had the glitch done this? Then he heard footsteps approaching and froze. There was nowhere to run, even if he had had the slightest clue where he was. He braced himself for the worst. If he’d barely avoided going to jail before, now he definitely was. 

When Jack rounded the corner, he let out the breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding. Relief wasn’t quite the right word for what he felt, but he certainly was happy it wasn't anybody else.

Otto started to explain. “Hello again. I–”

“I leave you alone for ten minutes. I swear–” Jack interrupted as he stormed over, “I should have never brought you here. We have to get out of here. Now.”

Jack grabbed Otto by the arm and practically dragged him through the hangar and out the back door. They ran toward a hovercar parked in the alley, Jack continuing to berate him the entire time.

“I was expecting an escape attempt sure, but this? This is–”

But Otto ignored him completely the moment they stepped outside the hangar. One good look at the city around him and Jack’s lecture turned to background noise. 

" _Whoa._ ”

The city crawled up the island like a mishmash cartoon dreamland, each unique borough bustling with life of all kinds. The buildings in the center towered higher than any he’d ever seen, with all manner of car and jet and ship speeding between them, buzzing like bees on a great glistening nest. 

Otto cracked a genuine smile. To think that such a place really existed, it made him reconsider what he thought was believable in this world. It was a strangely familiar sensation. It felt a lot like it did his first day at HIVE. In a way, it felt as familiar as home.

“Count yourself lucky,” Jack said off Otto’s look of bewonderment, “It's been a long time since a true outsider has seen this place.”

Jack shoved him in the car and they were off, whizzing dangerously fast through the streets. Otto could barely get a look at things as they whipped past, but the streets around them were quite dark and quiet considering all the fancy tech he'd seen so far. 

Then they rounded a corner and the world sprung to life again– lights and screens and sounds everywhere, totally different than the dead zone they had just left. 

“Care to enlighten me why you thought causing a mass blackout would help your case?” Jack asked, flashing Otto an accusatory look as he dodged through traffic.

So that’s why those streets had been so dark. “Mass blackout? What are you talking about, I was just trying to–”

A blasting report from a nearby holographic news screen cut him off: "Menace Jack Blank at it again. Our sources confirm that he arrived back on the island this morning, just before the blackout that took out over half of Galaxis occurred." The display on screen switched to an aerial shot of half of a high-tech spaceport suddenly going dark. Otto had to admit it looked pretty impressive.

“I did that?” Otto asked as the anchor on screen blathered on, receding in the distance.

“Yep.”

“And they think you did that?” Otto raised an eyebrow.

“Yep.” The irritation in Jack’s voice was palpable. He didn’t look away from the road ahead.

“Okay so I know that looks pretty bad but I swear it’s not my fault.” Otto raised his hands defensively. The fact that he had done so much damage without even knowing it actually really freaked him out, but he tried his best to hide it. Never letting your opponent know your weaknesses was a basic skill even first year HIVE students learned to master, after all.

“Right,” Jack rolled his eyes, “And why should I believe you?”

“I don’t know what happened,” Otto admitted through clenched teeth. That was only half a lie. Hopefully HIVEmind would have all the diagnostics sorted out shortly, but until then Otto was as much in the dark as he had left that district. 

“Oh of course. Probably some _other_ kid with machine powers came in and wrecked Galaxis,” Jack said, exasperated. Otto frowned. For a do-gooder, this kid certainly knew how to lay on the sarcasm.

“Well they are blaming you, aren’t they?” Otto snarked back.

There was a moment of an angry silence between them as Jack navigated deeper into the city, veering off into the side streets and zipping from one borough into the next. Otto suspected that Jack was no stranger to shouldering the blame for things here. Why else would the news be so quick to single him out? But still, it was curious. Otto wondered what Jack had done to earn so much negative attention. He figured that it couldn’t have been anything small. 

“Of course they’re blaming me. There’s no one else that can do what I do. No one else like me. Except you.” Jack sounded genuinely curious. 

Otto didn’t like that one bit. 

He turned away and looked out the window. “I’m not anything like you Jack.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for all the lovely comments on the first chapter. I honestly didn’t anticipate such a readership (ie, more than zero) so that’s nice, if entirely unexpected. It’s been a long long time since I’ve written fanfic of any sort so… go easy on me. I’ll do my best not to disappoint. ;) -k
> 
> ps. That week felt like it took forever to pass, no? I’m gonna try twice a week updates from now on. Shouldn’t be too hard because each chapter is pretty much written, I just like to give them a good once-over edit before posting. We’ll see how it goes.


	3. Pawns of Circumstance

Jack put Otto in his basement because what else are you supposed to do with a person who is sort of, nigh accidentally, your prisoner? He tied Otto to a chair, doing his best to make it look like he totally had tied someone to a chair before and that he definitely knew what he was doing. 

Otto didn’t fight as Jack tied him up. In fact, he seemed totally nonplussed by any part of the situation. Jack didn’t like how calm he was. Usually people acted a little more concerned when they’d been kidnapped, transported to a magical island, and stashed in a basement. Or at least he thought they did.

Jack figured his friends were going crazy trying to contact him. They’d want to know about the blackout. Seeing as Jack had no plausible way of explaining that away, now he really couldn’t ask for help without telling everyone he’d smuggled Otto here. Maybe Allegra would be on his side as far as giving Otto some (admittedly very generous) benefit of the doubt, but he knew Skerren would just as soon run him through with a sword. No, it was better to lay low for now. 

He sighed, finishing the knots on Otto’s hands. So maybe he hadn’t thought this whole “taking a mysterious kid captive” thing all the way through. He didn’t want to think about how things turned out the last time he had kept secrets from his friends. But this was different, right? The fate of the world wasn’t at stake here. He could handle just one kid on his own.

“Alright Otto,” Jack said as he pulled up a chair and sat face to face with him, “Spill it. Who are you and what were you doing at the Shanghai Museum?” 

Otto gave him a dubious look. “You've never conducted an interrogation before, have you?”

“What does that matter,” Jack stumbled, “You're not going anywhere until you tell me.”

“And what's keeping me here?” Otto replied with a chuckle, “You?” 

Jack frowned. “If you think that you can escape the streets of Cognito, you've got another thing coming. And if you think that your friends will come and save you, this island is impossible to find,” he said, though he had no doubt that Otto’s scrappy little team would try, especially if they were anything like his own friends. 

“You'd be surprised,” Otto said, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

Jack wanted to smack the smug look off of Otto's cheeky little face. Why wasn’t he more concerned about being taken captive? How could he make him take this seriously? Maybe not sending Otto straight to jail had been a bad idea. Jack thought Cognito would be the safest place to keep him, under close watch so he couldn’t use his powers, but now he wasn’t so sure. 

Otto looked at him with stoic certainty. “Why did you bring me here, Jack Blank?”

“Isn’t that obvious?” Jack said, his face hardening, despite the fact that he was beginning to wonder the same thing himself.

He leaned in real close, looked Otto directly in the eyes.

“Where are you from?” Jack shot.

“Nowhere you've ever been,” Otto parried.

“What were you stealing from the Shanghai Museum?” Another jab.

“What I needed.” Shut down again.

“Why?”

“Because they didn't give it to me when I asked nicely.”

“How old are you?”

“16.”

Jack paused. It was a bit of a shock to get a real answer. He leaned back.

“Oh. Me too,” he said quietly. 

He let out a sigh. It looked like ordinary questioning wasn’t going to cut it if he wanted real answers before his next birthday. Otto had been so eager to talk before, why did he have to go and clam up now? All their strange similarities aside, this white-haired kid had something to hide.

“Sorry,” Otto said, catching Jack off guard again.

Jack scrunched his face in confusion. “About what?”

“Sorry about your lot in life. Being a kid with crazy powers– It’s not easy, I know. I wouldn't wish it on anyone.” For maybe the first time, Otto seemed totally genuine. Jack tried to hide his surprise.

“I like my lot in life alright,” he responded. Sure, his time at the Imagine Nation hadn’t been all cupcakes and roses, but just thinking what his life would have been if he’d never left the orphanage– if he’d been an ordinary kid that grew up into an ordinary adult that had an ordinary life– it made him shudder. 

“Oh I figured.” Otto smiled that stupid smile. “I know I wouldn't trade mine for the world.”

Jack sighed again. This kid just kept getting stranger. But, he had to admit, not any stranger than himself. Guess the world really did have room for more than one sixteen-year-old, machine-controlling freak of nature. 

Though at the time, it had been quite the shocker. 

* * *

_Eight hours earlier._

"We're here for the rock and nothing else."

Otto whispered as he led Wing, Laura, and Shelby through a maze of dark gallery halls. Breaking into the museum had been easy. Getting his team to cooperate was another matter entirely.

It was a fairly straightforward mission. A cakewalk as far as heist operations go, but there was hardly any heists that weren’t a cakewalk for this team– the probable reason Nero sent them in the first place. But walking through the halls that night Otto had a lurking feeling that they were in for more than they bargained for.

"Aw come on. This is the Shanghai Museum. Do you know what the jade collection in here could fetch on the black market?" Shelby said with an exaggerated pout, her eyes drifting off to scan the darkened display cases. 

"And what’s with the whispering?" Laura chimed in, full Scottish volume as always, "No one’s here that can bother us."

"Guys," Otto replied, dropping the whisper, "What fun is it if we don't at least pretend this is challenging. I could switch the security back on at any time. Then we'll see who's laughing."

"That would be unwise." Wing examined a collection of ancient swords as they strolled by, as stoic as ever.

"Fine. Let's just get what Nero wants and get out of here." Otto pressed onward.

Five minutes later they found what they were looking for. A seemingly innocuous carved stone seal, no bigger than a fist, sat in a lighted freestanding display case. The flat side of the dark stone had elaborate curving Chinese characters engraved on it, while the other side was shaped into an intricate roaring dragon. But they weren’t there for the artistic or historical value of the thing– they were there, as Otto had so bluntly put it, for the rock it was made out of. 

And it was quite a rock, too. As Otto moved closer, the lines in the stone seemed to move and change before his eyes, as if something unearthly slithered just beneath the surface. But it was just a trick of the light. Probably.

"I call dibs!" Shelby dashed for the display case as soon as they spotted it. She had her lock picking tools working before anyone could say elsewise.

"No fair! You got to do the last one!" Laura rushed up behind her, practically pressing her nose to the glass to get a closer look.

Wing gave the room a brief scan before joining the girls at the case. He gave Otto a shrug on the way by. It wasn't the most badass heist that ever was, but you can only break into high security places so many times before it got a bit repetitive. 

"Got it!" Shelby popped the lock and went to open the case.

Otto wrinkled his eyebrows. "Hold on, something doesn't feel--" 

Too late. Shelby moved the glass and suddenly alarms were ringing everywhere.

"Otto! What's happening?! Shut it off!" Laura shouted.

Otto tried to shut the alarm off, but when he reached out to the security system it was like something batted him away. Gritting his teeth he realized that whatever it was, he wasn't going to stop it the easy way. Seems they were going to get their challenge after all.

"Grab the rock and let's go!" A strange sensation creeped at the corners of his mind. He did his best to ignore it.

Shelby threw him an incredulous look before she stuffed the seal in her pouch. She quickly joined the rest of the gang as they ran for the exit. 

"Turn these things off nerd brain!" Shelby looked like she was about to slap Otto.

"I'm trying! Something's blocking me!"

"Like the tech made to block your powers?" Wing guessed.

"No. It's something else," Otto said, furrowing his brow.

They rounded a corner when the overhead lights suddenly turned on, illuminating a small crowd of kids that blocked the way out. Both groups looked pretty surprised to see each other– it wasn't every day that they faced other kids. Otto guessed the three at the front of the other gang– a boy who looked like he'd been plucked out of medieval times, a girl whose skin was so pale it was nearly silver, and a boy with a strange scar around his right eye– were about his age. Behind them, another girl and a Chinese boy looked like they were itching for a fight. And Otto thought his crew looked weird.

"Drop the seal and nobody has to get hurt," the boy with the scar said with bold confidence. Powers functioning or not, it grated Otto in a way he couldn't just ignore.

Otto stepped forward slowly, arms out in a gesture of mock vulnerability. "No thanks. We need it. So we'll just be going then."

Behind scar boy the silver girl piped up. "They're just normals, Jack. What do we do?"

Medieval boy replied, gripping his swords tightly, "Doesn't matter. They're the ones stealing stuff. Stuff they shouldn't have."

"Yep, that's us!" Shelby seemed awfully chipper for having just been (accurately) accused of stealing a priceless item.

"Shelby!" Laura scoffed.

Jack tried again. "Please. We really don't want to hurt you."

Medieval boy muttered in the background. "Don't speak for all of us.

Otto finally worked his way past the block. He switched off the alarm and smiled as the room went silent.

"Who's saying that you can?"

A look of confusion flashed across Jack's face. Otto opened his mouth to make another witty retort when suddenly medieval boy lunged forward with a yell and a flash of steel, aiming for Otto.

"Skerren, No!" Silver girl shouted, and Otto could have sworn that her arms began stretching longer than they should, but he didn't quite see because Wing had grabbed a katana off a display and jumped to block Skerren's swords in a clash of steel.

The look of shock on Skerren's face as Wing pushed his blades aside was uniquely satisfying, but it only lasted a second before it was replaced with a glare of boiling fury. 

That's when the chaos truly began. 

Shelby whipped out a small tactical knife with a smirk. Then the other girl multiplied twice and suddenly there were three of her, and a horde of honest-to-god dragons appeared behind the boy. Shelby’s face fell in disbelief. They had seen a lot of strange things in their days at HIVE, but this was by far the strangest yet. 

"The blonde one has it!" shouted the silver girl, who Otto realized was actually literally silver, as her arms started to stretch and bend in ways that arms usually shouldn't. 

Shelby practically had to pick Laura's chin up off the floor. "Who are these guys?" she managed to ask as their attackers charged forward. 

Laura dodged behind displays to avoid dragons while Shelby took on the three identical girls, acrobatically avoiding their onslaught of attacks as they grabbed for her pouch. Skerren’s assault on Wing didn’t cease and the clash of swords rang out through the hall. 

"Really feeling the lack of hand-to-hand combat specialists in our group right now!" Shelby shouted between dodges.

Otto, narrowly avoiding the clash between Wing and Skerren, realized that without any useful technology for him to control, they were utterly outmatched. "Right. Gift Shop! Now!"

Understanding instantly, Laura, Shelby, and Wing (as best he could) made way for the gift shop on the other side of the open hall. The metal detector wailed as they tumbled into the still-dark shop, but Otto shut it up with half a thought. He reached out with his powers and, as he expected, many of the toys in the shop had just enough electronics in them for him to control. Not exactly the deus ex machina they needed, but hopefully enough to create a distraction large enough for them to escape.

"There! The door!" Laura pointed to an exit on the side of the shop. The way out was so close. 

But their pursuers were even closer. Skerren caught up and slashed at Wing with a snarl. Their fight resumed in full force.

"Go! Get out of here!" Otto shouted to the girls, who didn't hesitate to bolt for the exit and out into the plaza.

Meanwhile, he mentally switched on ten tiny samurai action figures on the shelf above Skerren, sending them toppling onto the viking boy's head. Wing took the chance to land a kick in Skerren's midsection, sending him crashing backward far enough that he could follow the girls in their escape.

"Otto! Let's go!" Wing shouted from the doorway.

"Go on! I’ll be right there!" 

With another thought, RC cars went launching toward the triplets and the gliders dangling from strings on the ceiling whirred to life. Otto chanced a smile. Maybe they weren't as flashy as these other guys, but team HIVE still had some tricks up their sleeves.

Otto sent a toy glider whizzing overhead, diving straight for Jack. But the other boy didn't dodge it. And Otto felt it again, like the block in the security system, as the plane swerved around Jack, and out of his control. Otto stared at the other boy across the room in shock. It was him. 

They locked eyes in recognition, and after a moment of silent struggle between them, the whole room erupted in noise and light and music as every electronic toy came to life. The rest of Jack's team cringed at the jarring cacophony but Jack and Otto remained motionless. Otto scrambled to regain control of everything or anything, but his influence slipped on and off to no effect. They were too evenly matched. 

Otto focused instead on Jack himself, and noticed something strange and mechanical inside him, just as he felt Jack's power brush with the computer inside his own head. A nanosecond later they both slammed their defenses up with such force that it was like sticking a fork in an electrical outlet. It knocked both boys to their feet and silenced the whole room instantaneously.

"You're like me," Jack said with genuine curiosity. Otto didn't have time for this. But as he tried to get up he realized his head had collided with a shelf of particularly dense statuettes, and as such was feeling quite less than alright. Spots danced across his vision as he watched the gang of freaks ran out the door after his friends.

Consciousness slipping, he saw Jack get up. With his last ounce of mental strength, he desperately tried to fight, but it was no use. His eyes fell closed. He’d lost. How embarrassing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I took a page out of Ottra’s book (/fic) for this one– perhaps a manifestation of my subconscious (and conscious) desire for more chapters in that excellent jba/HIVE crossover? Or maybe there’s just something about sneaking around museums that suits these two so well. Either way, for an incredibly small fandom, there certainly is a lot of talent to go around! -k
> 
> ps. Two updates per week obviously didn’t work out (I said no promises, haha), but I’ll try again this week!


	4. Busted

“What is this place anyway? This city, I mean. Not your basement,” Otto asked, still perfectly nonchalant. To Jack, the basement was starting to feel awful stuffy. The familiar clutter of all his computers and gadgets felt suffocating. Questioning was getting him nowhere. But he still wasn’t ready to give up, despite his growing frustration. His curiosity wouldn’t let him.

“What makes you think I’ll tell you?” Jack quipped back, trying his hand at being cagey.

“Because you brought me here,” Otto replied, completely unfazed. “And I’ve gathered that it isn’t your average remote island resort location. You did threaten to throw me in supervillain jail, you know.”

Jack sighed, stalling. He’d done a pretty piss poor job of keeping the nature of the Imagine Nation secret, what with that little escapade through town that had basically given Otto the grand tour. Still, it felt like kind of a big deal to let that cat well and completely out of the bag, especially because he still didn’t know what exactly he was dealing with here. 

Otto certainly didn’t seem like he was a huge security threat to the Imagine Nation, but what if he was? He had caused that blackout, unwittingly or not, and Jack still didn’t know why he and his friends had stolen that artifact. But he just didn’t seem like a master thief or some great arbiter of disaster– he seemed like an ordinary kid. Well, as ordinary as a kid with superpowers got.

“It’s called the Imagine Nation,” Jack replied, deciding not to bother dancing around the truth. “It’s where all the extraordinary people in the world usually come from, or end up. Or at least I thought it was.”

Perhaps he shared all this just because he still couldn’t quite wrap his head around there possibly being some other haven of super powered individuals out there. Why hadn’t Otto been brought to the Imagine Nation by an emissary? Were there others out there like him? 

The whole mess felt more personal than it usually did. Fighting Otto in the museum had felt different to him than his usual clashes with villains. His friends obviously didn’t feel the same. They were ready to lock Otto and his accomplices up without second thought, just like they’d done with countless other supervillains. They would have thrown Otto in the slammer in an instant had they known that he was the real reason Jack had convinced them to return to the Imagine Nation on such short notice. 

What really threw Jack for a loop about Otto though was the fact that they had, as best as he could gather, identical powers. Maybe it was just coincidence, but after spending years in the Imagine Nation, coincidence was something Jack believed in less and less. As stupid as it was, he had to find out the answers for himself. 

“It’s funny. In another life maybe I would have ended up here, on your island of misfit toys,” Otto said with a hint of a smile.

“Oh yeah? Would I have fit in where you and your friends are from?” Jack asked.

Otto let out a chuckle. “Not in the slightest. But nice attempt at getting more info. Very natural.”

Jack clenched his jaw, frustration growing. He’d brought Otto here for answers. What was he supposed to do if he couldn’t get them? Otto was still the best lead they had at recovering the artifact, which was looking to be not much of a lead at all. Maybe taking Otto to jail now was the best option, even if it meant he would some serious explaining to do to his friends.

As he weighed his options, Jack caught Otto eyes as they flicked over to a blank computer screen on a desk nearby for half a moment. He realized instantly that he’d made a big mistake. 

Jack turned to the computer and opened a window on screen with a thought. His stomach dropped. Layers and layers of code flashed by, code that shouldn’t be there at all. It was Otto– he must have been messing around with it the whole time.

“What’re you doing? Stop!” Jack could barely follow what was happening, let alone dive in and stop it. He hadn’t expected Otto to be able to use his powers without him realizing it. A foolish assumption, since he hadn’t exactly ever faced anyone else with machine-controlling powers before. But why had he bothered giving Otto so much benefit of the doubt? The kid was clearly bad news.

Otto stared right at Jack. “Just checking things out,” he said evenly.

Jack scrambled to understand the code flying by at breakneck speed. Then suddenly it clicked into clarity– Otto was trying to get into the communications grid, and not just the internal one. He was after the big guns, the off-island stuff that was highly guarded and high powered. And he’d almost got it.

“Stop! You can't do that!” Frantic, Jack tried the keyboard first, rushing to enter in any bits of code that might slow Otto down. 

“Well, yes. I can.” Otto gritted his teeth. The code moved faster.

“You'll broadcast the location of Imagine Nation out to the world!” Jack typed desperately, sweat beading on his brow. He didn’t know what would happen if he and Otto fought digitally again, and he really didn’t want to find out.

Otto tilted his head with a hint of a smile. The code sped up again. “Exactly my point. Phone-home, and all that.”

Anger bubbled up from Jack’s stomach. “Don't! Stop!!” 

“Make me.”

Jack mentally tried to force the computer to shut down. Otto swatted him away like a digital fly. Jack reached for the code itself and tried to slow it, but it was like putting the brakes on an avalanche. Otto sat unmoving, staring at the screen with that infuriating half-smile plastered to his face. 

Desperate, Jack attacked Otto directly. With furious power, Jack attempted to take control of the semi-mechanical device inside Otto. He’d felt it before briefly, back at the museum, but he wasn’t sure what it did or what it would do if he messed with it, but Jack was too angry to care. He focused all his power on shutting it down. 

Otto took the hit with a physical jolt, and Jack instantly felt him reeling. The code on screen fell to pieces as Otto fought to take back control. But it was too late. 

The machine in Otto’s head was like nothing he’d ever encountered before. It was way too complicated for him to understand, so rather than shutting it down or controlling it, it was as if his powers let him slip into it, creeping around the mechanical fringes. Still furious, he rampaged through what he could, bent on doing whatever it took to keep the Imagine Nation safe.

But he quickly realized that the device was connected to Otto’s brain even more deeply than he guessed as Otto’s thoughts and memories started appearing in his mind’s eye. The flight here– the night at the museum– the faces of Otto’s friends– their names– Jack saw it all, and then probed deeper. Maybe, finally, he could get some real answers, albeit the unconventional way. But Otto started throwing up barriers, hiding away his most critical secrets– his past, where he was from, all of it still locked away. It only made Jack angrier.

_Still hiding, huh?_

Jack could sense how much focus it was taking Otto just to keep his walls up. He pressed harder, not ready to give up just yet, and he started to feel Otto’s defenses wavering. More thoughts slipped out, thoughts full of confusion and horror and fear. Jack kept going. 

Then Otto went slack jawed and limp, slumping down in his chair like a broken doll. A sickening feeling hit the bottom of Jack’s stomach like a rock, and he stopped his relentless attack nearly instantly. He’d gone too far. He hadn't meant to hurt Otto. Well, at least not this bad. Frustration fading, Jack released him.

Otto inhaled a huge breath as if surfacing from underwater. Pulling against his restraints, he spent the next moments wide-eyed and gasping for air. Jack felt another pang of guilt. 

“That wasn't smart,” Otto said finally with a quiet, scary anger. He didn’t raise his eyes.

Jack mentally readied himself for a retaliation, but none came. Instead, Otto sat there, completely still.

Jack launched into more interrogation. “Tell me where the artifact is or I’ll–”

Otto cut him off with an accusatory stare. “Or you’ll what? I was under the impression after our first encounter we each had the decency to keep out of each others, well, _internal machinery_. For obvious reasons.”

Jack’s face hardened. “Look, I had no choice. You were trying to sabotage–”

“No you look. I am just trying to get home and you–” Otto turned to the computer, frowned, grimaced, and then let his face fall into a blank sort of horror, “–you have just made it a lot harder.”

“What?”

“I can’t… My– my abilities. They're gone.”


	5. Infectious Personality

_Otto it seems there's b(*$ &^&*^@(((##(*&$ and I am unable to s%&$$*%&$---_

Otto cringed. HIVEmind’s garbled glitch-speak was like digital nails on a chalkboard in his head. _“I can't understand a thing you're saying buddy. Just– try to fix what you can. And try to keep that glitch thing from happening again.”_

_%**^( &$*#*&._

Otto turned away from the useless computer screen. He had a feeling this headache wasn't going to go away anytime soon. The room around him was dead, completely absent of the constant underlying digital hum he hadn’t even really noticed except in its absence . His mouth went completely dry. His abilities had become so natural to him, such a part of his whole identity, that suddenly being without them made him feel naked. 

Meanwhile, Jack looked completely unapologetic, much to his disdain. Having his head hacked had been all kinds of unpleasant, and not just because Jack had taken the time to try to rifle through his memories. What really made Otto worry was how utterly powerless he’d been against Jack’s onslaught. That feeling of complete vulnerability– the fact that Jack could have probably taken complete control of him like a puppet just then– it was a serious blow to his ego. 

And it was more than that too. A prickle of fear crawled down his spine, but he did his best to ignore it. He’d done just fine for himself before he had his abilities, right? He didn’t need superpowers to run circles around nearly everyone else at HIVE, so he should be able to handle one kid. With superpowers. On an unreachable island in the middle of nowhere.

This was turning into much more of a challenge than he had expected.

For how seemingly harmless Jack was on the outside, underneath he was strong. Dangerous, even. Maybe the most dangerous foe that he’d ever faced, unwitting or not.

Jack finally spoke, his tone just a hair softer than it was before. “I didn't mean to–”

Otto cut him off, leaning into his restraints with purpose. “Whatever you did or didn't mean, it doesn't matter now. What matters is that you messed up the thing in my head that lets me do what we do.”

“Sorry.” Jack didn’t sound all that sorry. “I can try to fix it if you–”

Otto reflexively shifted back in his seat. “Whoa whoa, don't even think about it. After you demolished your way through my head already? No thanks.”

Jack folded his arms. “Fine. Whatever. Have it your way.” 

Otto sighed, unsure of how to proceed. Jack could have jumped right back in his head without asking for consent, and now he couldn’t do anything to fight back. So why didn’t he? Otto wasn’t used to dealing with people who had so much of a conscience, and frankly it was throwing him for a loop. 

“I had a feeling you'd say that,” Otto said. “Too decent for your own good.” 

Jack’s face hardened. “And you’re a lot less decent than I thought you were. But at least now you’ll be easier to keep locked up.”

Otto bit his tongue. Despite how much he wanted to tell Jack off right then and there, Otto knew he’d have to play nice now that he was at such a serious disadvantage. He had to be careful. This whole charade depended upon Jack believing that he wasn’t really a bad guy. If Jack ever found out about HIVE, the jig would be up. And if that happened, Otto imagined that supervillain jail would be the least of his worries. 

Otto scowled deeply. How was he supposed to get home with his head full of glitches and broken to boot? He wanted to fight back, he wanted to run, he wanted to do anything other than just sit there helpless, but what good would it do him? He was beaten and outmatched and seriously pissed about it. He took a deep breath and tried to approach things rationally. He had no intention of playing twenty questions in Jack’s basement for any longer, but after two spectacularly botched escape attempts he didn’t have much of a choice but to play nice. For now.

“Alright Jack Blank. It seems I don’t have a choice,” Otto said, “I'll play your game. What do I have to do to get off this island?”

Jack looked a bit taken aback at Otto’s sudden willingness to cooperate. It took him a moment to recover.

“Okay. Um. Well, tell me who you are, for starters.” 

“Otto Malpense. Sixteen-year-old genius with a, well, _unconventional_ resume of life experience. From London originally,” Otto answered without hesitation, but then leaned in, more serious, “But that's not what I meant– I want you to tell me what exactly I have to do for you to decide to let me leave this island.” 

“Or turn you over to the high security prison.” Jack raised an eyebrow.

Otto tilted his head to the side, acknowledging the threat. “Or that. But I think both of us aren't fans of that outcome, seeing as you’ve had plenty of opportunity and justification for doing so already.”

“I’m starting to see the flaws in that approach more and more,” Jack grumbled. 

Otto pressed onward. “You haven't made up your mind yet whether or not I'm a good guy. I imagine the whole ‘stealing a priceless and apparently dangerous artifact’ thing, plus the blackout, plus that little communications stunt aren’t exactly points in my favor. But you're obviously someone who knows that doing the right thing often involves doing a few wrong things along the way.”

Jack looked away and Otto could tell that he’d struck the right chord. The fact alone that Jack was willing to smuggle a thief onto his secret island on nothing more than a personal hunch was telling enough for Otto to assume that, goody-good appearances aside, Jack was willing to break the rules. And it was an even safer bet that he already had.

He continued, “Don’t feel bad. It's a side effect of having power of any kind really. But even stripped of mine I can see where you might still have your doubts about me. That's why I'm going to prove it to you- I’ll prove that I'm not a bad guy.”

“And how do you plan on doing that?” Jack asked. Otto smiled. He’d hooked him.

“Easy. I'll help you get the seal back.”

Otto started to launch into the whole plan he'd concocted to do just that, but he froze, the words refusing to come out of his mouth. Suddenly, pain streaked through him, hot and immediate, blocking out all other thought. A small part of his remaining consciousness realized he must be glitching again as his body convulsed, sending him and the chair crashing to the floor, the ropes biting into his arms as they spasmed. 

The computer screens went haywire. His whole body shook. Otto felt his awareness flash in and out. The glitch was worse this time, stronger, more violent now that he had no power to defend himself from it. It ripped through him like a ragged knife, trying to break him. He fought against the safe calm of unconsciousness. He feared what would happen if he surrendered, to himself and to everything around him.

He thought he heard Jack saying something, his tone thick with concern. How unfortunate that, even after gaining a bit of good grace, he’d be the object of such pity. But honestly, how many times in one day was he going to be rendered completely powerless and/or unconscious? Because he wasn’t sure that he could take much more. He squeezed his eyes shut and let the darkness surround him.

\- - -

Jack winced as Otto returned to himself with a heaving gulp of air. He was drenched in sweat and still contorted in a pile of limbs, even though Jack had disentangled him from the shoddy bindings and chair. Jack panted, equally sweaty and shaken, sitting on the floor beside Otto. He clutched a small transmitter.

“Ah. It worked,” Jack said, a hint of relief crossing his otherwise distressed face.

“What worked,” Otto croaked from the floor, his voice still not completely cooperating.

Jack studied Otto silently for a moment. 

“You really don’t know, do you?” Jack ran a hand through his hair. Whatever had just happened to Otto must have been what happened at the hangar. And whatever had just happened was definitely not intentional on Otto’s part. But if that was true, things just got a whole lot messier. 

“It’s kind of complicated. And a long story. A complicated long story.”

Otto raised an eyebrow– an invitation to continue.

“Okay. So that artifact you were stealing? The stone it’s made of is a meteorite of alien metal, an alien metal from a robot race called the Rustov. These guys were bad news, right, like completely evil, destroyers of worlds, the whole shebang. They infected people and used them as hosts. They almost destroyed the Imagine Nation, and the world. We wiped them out a while back. Or at least we thought.”

Otto blinked, face blank. If he doubted Jack’s tales of alien invaders, he certainly didn’t show it. 

“This–” Jack wiggled the transmitter in his hand “– is broadcasting the antidote code to a Rustov virus. A virus we eliminated three years ago. A virus that only affects mechas.”

Otto looked equal parts dubious and concerned. Either he really hadn’t know about the artifact’s Rustov ties or he was exceptionally good at faking it. But Jack figured that for the amount of pain Otto just went through, there was no way he was carrying the virus on purpose. 

Still, the reappearance of the Rustov code left a bitter taste in his mouth. He’d had his suspicions about the artifact ever since they were assigned to go check it out, but for it to be carrying the Rustov virus really was a worst case scenario. He hadn’t noticed any trace of Rustov code in Otto’s head when he’d rifled through it earlier, and he would have sensed immediately if Otto had a Rustov parasite in him. So why now? And how was the mecha virus even affecting a human?

Meanwhile, Otto was silent for a moment, taking it all in. 

“Huh,” he said finally.

“If I hadn't stopped you, who knows how much of the Imagine Nation you would have taken offline. All of Cognito at least. Probably more,” Jack shot back.

“Hmm.”

" _Hmm?!_ You nearly wipe out two districts, you try to broadcast the location of the Imagine Nation to the world, and now you’ve even got Rustov code in you, and all you can say is _Hmm??_ ”

Otto sat himself up, brushed himself off, and turned to Jack.

“Well, we've learned three things,” he said.

“What.” Jack replied through gritted teeth.

Otto held up a finger.

“One- you didn't entirely break my head. It seems my abilities are still somewhat functional. It's just that I can no longer control them.”

“You're not really inspiring any confidence, you know.”

“Two- the glitch is curable. Thanks for that, by the way. Handy.” Otto nodded toward the transmitter.

“Don't mention it. But it’s really not–”

“And Three- the artifact we stole is indeed even more dangerous than anticipated. Which means that helping you get it back will be more than enough good karma to earn my freedom.”

“I never said–”

Otto clapped his hands together and sprung to his feet. “Great it’s settled then. Lets get to work on arranging a meet. My friends will–”

“Otto,” Jack stopped him, finally, rising to his feet, “The transmitter– it’s only a temporary fix. The glitch in you is different than the glitch we cured. This code is only suppressing it, and just barely at that. And there's still the issue of your powerlessness.”

Otto paused, but not for long. “I did this before I had powers, and I can do it again.”

Jack didn’t doubt that he meant it. But was he really ready to trust this thief on his word to help him recover the artifact? He still knew infuriatingly little about who Otto really was or what his true intentions were. True, he didn’t have any other leads on the artifact’s whereabouts and he couldn’t just leave in the hands of Otto’s mysterious friends, especially now that he knew about the extent of its Rustov ties. But could he really risk his life for this kid who’d caused him nothing but trouble?

As much as he hated it, they’d have to work together for now.

“Okay fine,” Jack agreed against all better logic. “But either way we have to get rid of the virus in you first. And I think I know just the way to do it.”

\- - -

“Otto, Jazen. Jazen, Otto.”

Otto half-waved, meekly. Jazen appraised him with a look of deep concern. The air was altogether too still in Jazen’s lavish living room. Otto casted Jack a look, begging for help. Jack avoided his gaze, lips tight. By the looks of it, he was regretting the decision to bring him here, even though he had insisted this was their best chance.

Otto started thinking about all the different ways he could possibly escape, but stopped himself. As much as he hated to admit it, this virus business was worse than he thought. He didn’t know if he could take another glitch episode without it killing him. He needed Jack’s help, for better or for worse.

“Where did you say you found him again, Jack?” Jazen asked.

“Um…” 

“You didn't register him with immigration at all did you?”

“Well…” Jack trailed off, shuffling his feet sheepishly.

Jazen sighed and rubbed his temples.

Jack pushed back. “Look Jazen, I wouldn't have brought him to you if I didn't really need your help. He's- he's like me. Well, sort of.”

Otto sat silently as Jack proceeded to explain their predicament in detail– the artifact, the glitch, everything. The look of concern on Jazen's face only grew deeper. He pulled Jack aside.

“I don’t like this at all Jack,” Jazen said in a hushed tone, “A kid with powers? Not from the Imagine Nation? A human with a mecha virus? None of this makes any sense.”

“Yeah. I know. But I have to fix him. And since the original cure code is still in you I thought maybe it would be easier to adapt it from you as the source.” Jack had no idea if it would work, but it was the only thing he could think of to fix Otto.

“Well maybe,” Jazen replied, wary. Then he lowered his voice, “But it could be extremely dangerous. His power levels– I haven’t seen anything like them since, well, you. Is the kid even- I mean, does he even know–?”

Otto rolled his eyes, tired of being talked about like he wasn't there.

“You're not human are you?” He directed the question at Jazen.

“What?” Jazen replied, taken aback.

“Jack said something about mechas earlier. Although my senses aren't as good as they are when my head's not broken, they still work enough to know a highly advanced, well, piece of... technology? AI?” Otto spitballed, not sure what the politically correct term was here for a very convincing humanoid-appearing robot. 

“Android. Mecha– that’s what we're called here.” Jazen corrected him, his tone still full of mistrust, “And whether or not I'm human depends on your definition of human. Are you human?”

The question took Otto completely off guard. He opened his mouth to reply but closed it again, frowning.

“I don't know,” he replied quietly. 

Jack and Jazen said nothing. Their eyes filled with something like pity- not quite what Otto was going for but he’d take it over being ignored. And maybe he was being a bit dramatic, seeing as he’d never thought of himself as anything other than a flesh and blood human being. He’d never really questioned it before. 

But, if what Jack had said was true, the virus in him supposedly could only infect machines. And seeing Jazen, a being with programming so advanced it seemed human, only made him wonder more. Otto himself had a fair bit of programming in the device in his head. And he had been designed really, more than born. Was he really that different than Jazen? 

“Well are you going to get rid of the virus or not?” Otto snapped, trying to avoid any deeper questioning in that vein of thought. They didn’t have time to get existential.

“Y-yeah. Okay. Jazen?” Jack asked.

Jazen pressed his lips together and gave Jack a pointed look. 

“Sure.” Jazen reached to the back of his neck. A moment later he pulled out a what looked like a memory card and presented it to Jack. 

Otto raised an eyebrow at the card. “Well I hate to disappoint but I don't have an external card slot.”

Jack chuckled. “I figured. But there's other ways of downloading this into you. In fact I think I know just the machine we need to do it.”

Jack looked at Jazen with a mischievous glint in his eye. Jazen reacted immediately. 

“Oh Jack. Please don't tell me that you're thinking what I think you're thinking,” Jazen protested.

But it was too late. Jack had already made his mind up. 

“We're breaking into Smart Tower. Again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A little bit late on this one- sorry about that! (if anybody's even keeping track haha). I'll try to get back to the usual weekend posting, especially now that we're about to get into some of my favorite bits. -k


	6. Faced Off

“I don't like this Jack.”

Jazen cast Jack yet another dubious look as they sped through the streets toward Smart Tower in Jazen’s hovercar. Jack tightened his lips. In the seat behind them, Otto crossed his arms. 

“Well it’s this or me accidentally knocking half the city offline next time I glitch,” Otto grumbled. 

That just made Jazen look even queasier. 

“It'll be easy Jazen,” Jack jumped in, “Smart's nullifiers don't work on me anymore. We'll just walk right in there and get what we need. As far as his security is concerned, I'm invisible.”

Or at least Jack hoped so. What he had in mind wasn’t going to be easy. It was a big risk considering the most volatile variable of the whole situation was currently riding in the backseat.

Jazen didn’t buy it. “But this virus... why is it only happening now?”

“I don’t know,” Jack replied maybe a just touch too defensively, “Otto must have woken it up somehow.”

“And you’re sure it isn’t spreading?”

In the rearview mirror, Otto scowled. “I was doing just fine suppressing it myself before _somebody_ broke my head.”

Jack ignored him. “I’m broadcasting the cure code Imagine Nation-wide just in case. But that won’t be necessary much longer. We’ll go in, get what we need, and be gone before anyone notices.”

They rounded a corner and the tower came into view. Jack swallowed the knee-jerk jolt of fear that rose up from his stomach. Of all the unpleasant experiences he’d had on the Imagine Nation, a disproportionately large number of them had occurred in this tower. He tried not to replay them all in in his head as they pulled up to the curb a few blocks away. 

“There it is,” Jazen said as he switched the car off and turned to Jack, “Please tell me you have a real plan.”

“Don't worry buddy, I do.” Jack hopped out of the car and Otto followed suit. But as Jazen reached for his door handle, the lock flipped shut. Confused, he tugged on it, trying to get it to open– it wouldn’t budge. Suddenly, the other doors of the car closed and locked in unison with a resolute ka-thunk. Then the engine restarted. Jazen looked up in shock as he realized what was happening.

“Jack, don't you dare–”

“Sorry Jazen. I can't make you do this with me again. Not after last time,” Jack replied, his tone conflicted.

“Jack!” Jazen shouted, pounding on the window, “Jack let me out! Agghh!”

At Jack’s command, the car sped away, carrying a furious Jazen back the way they came.

Otto raised an eyebrow. “That was downright devious. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

Jack set his jaw. “Last time he and I broke into Smart Tower, I got him killed.”

“Oh.”

“Come on.”

– - -

Jack was right about them just waltzing in there. The doors parted and security cameras turned aside at his command, and they strided into Smart Tower lobby like they owned the place. 

“Didn't used to be like this,” Jack nodded at a camera on the wall as it went dark, “Even after the nullifiers stopped working, it took a while to convince the security to trust me. But they came around.”

The security bot at the front desk didn't even glance in their direction as they walked past and entered the elevator. Jack pressed the button for the top floor.

“I have to admit, this is the least conventional breaking and entering I've ever performed,” Jack said as the elevator started rising, “Last time we jumped from the building next door.”

“Now that sounds more like it.” Otto replied, though he did appreciate doing things the straightforward way for once. Especially when he’d wasted enough time on this freaky island already. 

The elevator doors opened to reveal a high tech lab unlike anything Otto had ever seen. Even the Professor’s lab back at HIVE couldn’t hold a candle to the dazzling array of futuristic gadgets and machinery that filled the room from wall to wall. He surveyed shelves of half built weapons, tables full of blueprints for theoretically impossible devices, machines with menacing looking tubes and needles jutting out the sides- it made his head spin. Otto was silently thankful that Jack’s Imagine Nation didn’t have any plans to destroy the earth or anything of the like, because with this kind of tech Otto was certain that not even all the forces of GLOVE could do anything to stop them.

“Over here,” Jack called from beside a locked door that led deeper into the lab. Otto tore his eyes of the piles of tech to catch up. Jack gestures at the door, frown deepening. It isn’t opening. 

“Smart's made sure this door really hates me,” Jack said.

“Well good thing it’s never met me,” Otto replied. He stepped toward the electronic locking mechanism and, without warning, pried it right off the wall.

“Whoa wah what–” Jack grabs for it but Otto swats him away, already tugging at the wires inside. 

“You cut the alarms right?” Otto asked as he plucked a few specific wires to examine closer.

“Yeah,” Jack replied, “but how are you going to–”

“It’s no big deal. Give me a minute and I'll have the door open.”

It had been quite a while since he’d had to do things the really old fashioned way and his knowledge of advanced circuitry was a little rusty (having a pseudo-superpower can do that to you), but it came back to him easily (having a computer in your brain had its benefits). He got it wrong a couple of times, but soon enough he’d arranged everything right and the light flashed green. Shelby would be proud.

Jack wore a look of thorough surprise as the door slid open.

“What? Don't they teach you electrical engineering on this island?” Otto asked, only halfway facetiously.

Jack shook his head no. Otto didn’t show his surprise. As far as he knew, his own ability to control technology was inherently linked with his innate understanding of it. Jack, on the other hand, didn’t seem to have the slightest in that department. 

Otto had noticed it earlier too, when Jack had tried to stop him getting at the communications systems by coding– it had been rudimentary and slow at best. Perhaps that was why he had underestimated Jack so completely. At least now Otto was certain that he had at least one advantage over Jack

As they entered, Jack switched on the lights and booted up a nasty looking piece machinery with a thought. He started typing on a console next to an especially malicious looking chair set-up– it certainly wasn’t lacking in the giant needles and menacing restraining shackles departments.

Jack gestured to the chair. “Have a seat.”

“Seriously?” Otto knew Jack had said that he was trying to help, but to someone who had just been the subject of a (somewhat botched) interrogation, the chair looked quite like an elaborate torture device.

“If we're gonna fix you first we have to figure out exactly what's wrong with you,” Jack said, hitting a button that made the chair rise.

“So what is this thing then?” Otto asked, still on the other side of the room.

“It”s kind of like a scanner. Like the most powerful scanner in the world actually. It maps minds.”

“And you're gonna just trash through my head again with the big guns huh.” Otto approached the chair warily and lightly touched one of the pronged devices sticking out from it. It moved with a violent jerk and he recoiled reflexively.

“No--no. It will just pinpoint the virus. I promise. We'll get the virus code and then we'll make a real antidote code and that's it,” Jack said with that infuriatingly earnest smile. 

He sounded sincere but Otto knew that he’d given Jack little reason to trust him, what with being cagey at best about everything Jack wanted to know. But what choice did he have really? If there was one surefire way to get Jack to stop trusting him completely, it was to tell him who he really was. If Jack barely trusted a mildly-hostile-yet-mysterious Otto, he’d condemn literally-goes-to-a-supervillain-school Otto in a heartbeat. 

So the secrecy would have to continue. And he’d just have to hope, for both their sakes, that Jack never found out about HIVE.

Otto locked eyes with Jack, and found himself wishing, oddly enough, that it didn’t have to be that way. “I'm trusting you, Jack Blank.” 

With that, Otto sat down in the scanner chair. Machinery closed in around him, cocooning him with wires and rods and gauges of all kinds. He gulped, wishing that he could sense what was going on, trying to believe that Jack wasn't playing him a fool and actually just going to dismember him right there. All the while the buzzing of the machine grew louder and louder.

“Jack,” Otto said quietly over the din.

“Yeah?”

“While you're poking around in my head again you might encounter the source code for a seemingly dangerous supercomputer AI. I'd appreciate it if you'd leave him be, his name's HIVEmind and he's usually quite friendly but probably very confused at the moment.”

Jack gave him an incredulous look then just shook his head in a tired sort of way.

“The surprises don't stop with you,” Jack said, the note of curiosity in his voice painfully apparent.

“It's a long story,” Otto replied, shutting him down once again. 

Jack turned to the machine. “You ready?”

“Just do it.”

Jack struck a key and Otto's vision went dark. 

– - -

Otto woke up to the sound of alarms blaring and the feeling of his face burning. 

“Jack?”

It came out as a whispered croak– the pain was so bad he could barely speak. He covered his right eye reflexively with one hand, wincing against the burning as he pushed away the array of needles and wires with the other. He turned to his side to see that Jack wasn’t standing at the computer next to him anymore– he was half passed out on the floor, fetal position.

Guess fixing the virus backfired royally. 

On the wall a monitor displayed a video feed of hordes of security officers swarming into the building. Beside it, the monitor attached to the scanner showed nothing but a wall of code. Otto swung himself out of the chair laboriously and started having a go at deciphering it.

He was greeted with a completely foreign code language with rules that barely resembled anything current or conventional. It could have taken an expert months, years to decipher and begin to understand. For Otto, it took two minutes. 

Thankfully it looked like Jack had already done most of the work building the antidote code. Completing it it was a matter of switching a few strings here and there to adapt it for his own OS, per say, which he did in a few keystrokes. Otto had to admit it was a little disconcerting to see the source code for what he considered a piece of his brain right there on the screen. An organic supercomputer-- here was what made him tick, what made his powers possible, all on display for him to see. The questions he could answer with just ten minutes with this code-- 

But he didn't have ten minutes. The screen beside him showed security bots coming in droves, closing in on the lab fast. He put what he hoped were the final touches on the cure code and sent it to the memory card.

Beside him, Jack half-yelled, half-whimpered in pain, coming to slowly.

“Oh good. You're not dead,” Otto said, his relief audible. There was no way they could take on all that security without Jack’s functioning powers.

“You!” Jack growled, picking himself up off the floor slowly.

“Uh–” Otto stammered, feelings of relief vanishing as Jack looks up at him with fire in his eyes.

“You did this! You attacked me on purpose!” Jack clutched at his chest, breathing labored.

Otto backpedaled. “But didn't we agree that the virus–”

“You overloaded the whole thing!” Jack shouted, advancing toward Otto, “You brought me here to try to infect all the Smart tech. I was an idiot for not seeing it. You almost did it too, if I hadn't contained it. I shoulda broke your head all the way when I had the chance. But I-- ahh--!”

Jack hunched over in pain and all the machines in the room went haywire– tools buzzing and computers screeching and monitors fizzling brightly and popping sparks all in a cacophony of electronic mayhem. Otto felt it too, his thoughts scrambling as the device in his head weathered the waves of Jack’s outburst.

But for just a second, through all the machine noise and mental scrambling, Otto could hear a voice, not his own and not Jack's:

_Thanks for the wake up call._

He snatched the card from the slot just as the guards charged into the lab. 

– - -

Jack came to in an interrogation cell.

Next to him, Otto waved meekly through restraints that bound him to the table. Jack looked at his similarly bound hands, still in a dazed state. 

“So. We got captured. Sorry about that. Did the best I could with the situation you left me with. Which, uh, what happened, by the way?” Otto asked, as infuriatingly unserious as ever. But still himself at least, which was a minor relief. Jack preferred regular Otto to an outright Rustov-infected Otto, at least by a slight margin. But just because he wasn’t outright infected, it didn’t meant that he wasn’t still up to no good.

“I should have never trusted you.” Jack didn’t look up at him, trying to keep his anger from boiling up again. He wasn’t having much success.

“Um, what?” Otto chuckled, real concern creeping into his tone.

Jack was still slightly baffled at how much damage this meek skinny kid could do. He’d nearly had the antidote finished when Otto’s attack had struck out of nowhere, despite the fact that Jack had gone in and only looked for the virus code, just like he said he would. All the tech in the room started going haywire and at first Jack thought that Otto was just glitching again, but as he tried to dampen the damage, Otto had done the unthinkable. 

But why, if Otto had really been attacking him, was he still so insistent on playing dumb?

“You can drop the act you know.”

“I didn’t attack you Jack. Pinky promise.” Otto held out a pinky from a cuffed hand.

“Then how do you explain that?” Jack gestured toward Otto’s face with his chin, sounding disgusted. Otto had no idea what he was talking about.

“What?”

“The Rustov mark. On your eye.”

“What mark?” Otto asked, tentatively, the ghost of the burning sensation from before creeping under his skin.

Jack nods to the one-way mirror behind them. Otto turns to look and sure enough there's a burn scar over his right eye, just like Jack's.

“Huh,” he said, blinking slowly. “Guess we match now.” 

“You really have no idea what you’ve done, do you?” Jack admitted, incredulous.

“Again, no.”

“We agreed not to mess with each other again. Your powers can afford to be broken. But mine can't.” Jack explained through gritted teeth. He clenched his fists, mentally kicking himself.

“Whoa whoa, hold on. Just because you're completely incapacitated when you don't have superhuman abilities doesn't mean that I'm not incredibly inconvenienced by the lack of mine.” Otto said, smarmy as ever. 

_That's not what he's talking about idiot._

Otto scanned the room, confused, looking for the source of the voice. That's when Jack realized.

“You can hear him?” The urgency in his voice verged on desperation.

“Who's him?” Otto asked cautiously, finally starting to sound a bit concerned.

“You know how you, apparently, have a supercomputer AI conscious in your head? Well I have one too, sort of. His name is Khalix. He's the prince– and as far as I know, the last– of the Rustov,” Jack said, “And you woke him up.”


	7. The Unlikely Team

When a man who could only be the infamous Jonas Smart paraded into the interrogation room, Otto could instantly tell why Jack hated him.

“Hello Jack,” Smart said, pressing his meaty fingers into the table between them, “Want to explain who your friend is and what you two were doing in my lab?”

“Not particularly,” Jack replied cooly.

That made Otto smile. When Jack wasn't completely infuriated at him, he was pretty alright.

“I checked with immigration and it seems your friend isn't registered as a resident or guest of the Imagine Nation. So what is he? A Rustov sleeper agent? I knew they weren't completely wiped out. It looks like you found another one just like you. Revile 2.0, hmm?”

“He's not like me.”

“Oh? Then how do you explain the Rustov mark on his eye?” Smart extended a finger toward Otto’s face.

“Jury is still out on that one, to be honest,” Otto chimed in. Not to mention that he really had no idea how he was going to explain his new facial adornment when he got back to HIVE.

“I was trying to stop him.” Jack clenched his jaw.

“Stop him? Together you nearly fried my whole network! Uploading a new Rustov virus, perhaps?” Smart leaned even closer to them. His breath smelled metallic. 

Exasperated, Jack tried to butt in, “No, I–”

“This is the end for you Jack, I've finally got you right where I can expose you for the dangerous liar you always have been.” Smart rubbed his hands together. 

“You don't– I–” Jack went pale. 

Otto couldn’t believe the audacity of this guy. He thought, with a smirk, how much Nero would disapprove of Smart’s tactics. The guy had zero finesse. 

It was hard for Otto to watch Jack floundering under Smart’s incessant blathering, especially because Smart was so hell bent on blaming Jack despite the fact that it really was pretty much all Otto’s own fault. But there was one way to fix that and shut Smart up in a hurry. It was risky, but it would have to work for now. Otto took a deep breath.

And laughed. 

A quiet chuckle at first, then a slow deliberate crescendo into a full on cackle. Jack and Smart dropped their heated feud instantly, heads turned in shock. Maybe Villainous Laughs 101 hadn’t been such a waste after all Otto thought as he put on his best crooked grin. 

“You're really convinced it's him, aren't you Smart?” Otto said, his eyes cold and dangerous.

Jack looked at him like he’d grown a third eye. Smart’s jaw practically hit the floor. And Otto was just getting started.

“You really think it’s _him_ using _me_? I'm insulted, really,” Otto said. Gone was the wide-eyed kid who didn’t take things seriously. He’d been replaced entirely by the coy, collected villain-in-training that HIVE so desperately wanted him to be.

“You?!” Smart managed to blurt out.

“Once Jack brought me to the island it took just a smidge of creative convincing to get him to break me into your tower. Seizing your network would have been child's play-- if he hadn't wised up at the last second.” Otto shot Jack a piercing look. Jack was still speechless.

“Wised up??” Smart balked, looking back and forth between the two boys in disbelief.

“So please, by all means, continue to blame Jack. It is an excellent opportunity to ruin him. But that latent bug should be kicking in about now so if you're going to get on with the ruining you had better hurry,” Otto said. Too easy.

“Latent bug? What latent bug?” Smart demanded, with a frantic look in his eyes.

Just then a security guard poked his head in the door, face fraught with worry. 

“Sir? You're going to want to address this.”

Smart scowled deeply. And Otto knew he’d won.

“White hair, when I'm done with you you're going to wish you'd never set foot on this island. And Jack-- don't think that you're off the hook yet. I'll be back after I deal with this.” With that, he stormed out of the room. 

Otto sighed, and like taking off a mask, in an instant he was back to normal.

“Well he's quite unpleasant, isn't he?” Otto asked a still-dumbstruck Jack.

“Is that who you really are then?” Jack asked, his eyes narrowing. Otto knew he had risked losing what little trust Jack had in him but he needed to throw Smart off the trail if they were going to get out of there. Time for some damage control. 

“What, that little show?” Otto brushed it off. “I admit you must be confused. But you did give me the idea after all, what with trying to blame me for everything.”

“I should let Smart have you. It’d be a whole lot easier than dealing with you myself,” Jack said in a huff. 

“You could do that. But then you'd never see the artifact again. You need me. I have the code for the glitch cure in my pocket. So let’s get out of here, fix my head, fix your… thing, and fix this mess before I glitch out again and cause both of us more irreparable skin damage.” Otto hoped that was enough to distract him. He felt a twinge of guilt for stringing Jack along like this, but he had to keep the plates spinning somehow or else Jack might bust into his head and find him out for real. 

He kind of wished that he could tell Jack the truth about who he really was. It certainly would have been simpler than hiding it, if only it didn’t mean losing Jack’s trust forever. Silently, he pleaded with Jack to just go along with him one more time.

“If you hadn't noticed we're locked in a high security dungeon,” Jack said, on the hook once again.

Otto smirked. “Well you did say that no conventional prison could hold people like us. Time to prove it.”

\- - -

Jack popped his handcuffs open with a thought. He stretched his stiff shoulders and took a deep breath. In theory breaking out would be fairly straightforward- unlock the doors sneak past the guards and they were home free. But doing it with a highly questionable and Rustov-infected individual however, was less simple. 

“A little help here?” Otto tugged at his cuffs.

Jack raised an eyebrow. “You can’t open them?”

“Even if my head weren’t broken, it seems that trick is exclusive to you.”

Interesting. Maybe their powers had more differences than he originally thought. Jack half considered leaving Otto there, locked to the table. That whole stunt with Smart had rattled him pretty good. Every time Jack started to trust Otto, he’d pull something like that and it would be back to square one. Otto had never struck him as evil, despite everything, until that moment. As much as it pleased Jack to see Smart bested at his own game, he couldn’t get that chilling smile out of his mind’s eye. Just who was he dealing with here? 

But Otto had been right when he said that Jack needed him to get the artifact back. He’d have to trust Otto one more time. The cuffs fell away with a click.

“Thanks,” Otto said, rubbing his wrists.

Jack put a palm on the reinforced automatic metal door to their cell and asked it to open. No luck. He frowned and tried harder, but it wouldn’t budge.

“Door's beyond me. This might be the shortest breakout attempt ever.”

He turned to see Otto looking at himself in the two-way mirror, fingers lightly touching the dark mark around his eye. His hand fell quickly when he saw Jack was watching. “Oh don't be such a downer, Blank.” Otto said, “Did you try disabling the breaker code?”

“The what?”

“Honestly it amazes me you get anything done,” Otto replied. “Tell the electricity to stop talking to the door. It should short it out and force it to open. I’d mess with the wires again and do it myself again but these walls are a little less breakable that the ones upstairs.”

Jack concentrated for a moment, trying to do what he said. Amazingly, it worked and the door slid open with a soft beep.

Tentatively he stuck his head out into the dark basement hallway. Clear, for now. But Jack knew it wouldn’t stay that way for long.

“You any good in a fight?” Jack asked. 

“With humans? Not really,” Otto replied.

“Me neither.” Jack couldn’t help but chuckle. Seemed like being terrible at hand-to-hand combat was a common side effect of having machine-controlling powers. “Let’s go.” 

Together they slipped into the hall and jogged stealthily past what appeared to be a series of interrogation rooms and cells. Jack didn’t remember seeing this on any of the plans for Smart Tower, though he could see why Smart wouldn’t be too keen on putting them on the blueprints. Jack spotted a security camera in a corner and went to divert it but found he didn’t have to. In fact most all of the security was offline, thanks to a bit of malicious code in the system.

“You were serious about that latent bug weren’t you?” Jack raised an eyebrow in Otto’s direction as they crept down the hall, but his face was inscrutable as ever.

Otto shrugged. “Thought I’d throw a wrench in the system as I was finishing up the antidote. Just in case. But it probably won’t last long.”

Right on cue, alarms started blaring. Jack cursed under his breath. No use wasting time disabling them now.

“This way,” Jack shouted, eyes darting down the hall. Knowing Smart, a pack of his goons would be rounding the corner at any second.

Jack took off running toward what he hoped was the way toward the elevator, Otto in tow, as shouts from nearby security guards echoed against the concrete walls. If he wasn’t careful they’d be cornered like rats in a maze.

Otto jogged up next to Jack. “So who's Revile?”

A security goon prowled the adjacent hall. Jack threw up an arm to stop Otto from running out in front of him just in time, sucking in a sharp breath and dragging the both of them behind a dark corner. The question had taken him so off guard that they barely stopped in time. 

“Now isn't exactly the best time to ask.” Jack hissed once the guard had passed. He’d been trying exceptionally hard to forget about Revile. It was just like Smart to go digging up his less-than-perfect past whenever it was most convenient. And of course nothing got past Otto. As soon as Smart had uttered that name, Jack knew it had been only a matter of time before Otto started tugging on that thread. 

Jack led onward, heading down the hallway in the opposite direction from the guard.

“You have more secrets than you let on, Jack Blank.” Otto said, smug. 

“Says the kid who won't tell me anything other than his name. And apparently has a split personality,” Jack countered.

“Touche. And it’s called acting,” Otto replied.

“Oh really?” Jack replied, giving Otto some serious side-eye.

“Yeah. But you wouldn't know anything about that, would you?” Otto returned Jack’s look, equally determined not to back down.

“Well you know what, I--” Jack swallowed his comeback with a gulp. In their arguing they had managed to run straight toward a security room chock full of guards. One of the guards looked right at them, and his eyes went wide.

Both of them skidded to a stop in unison, shoes squeaking on the floor as they scrambled to start sprinting in the other direction.

“There they are! Stop them!” The guard shouted as he pointed vigorously at them through the open door, gesturing to all the others and grabbing his gun. 

“How do we get out of here?!” Otto shouted. Behind them, the guards opened fire, sending laser bullets whizzing past them and leaving nasty looking char marks on the walls.

“I know the way to the front door, but it’s no use,” Jack said, ducking around a corner into yet another concrete hallway. “Smart himself is probably standing right in front of it.” 

“Well then we’ll go out the back door,” Otto said, quite matter-of-fact. 

“There is no back door!” Jack shouted, exasperated.

Jack looked over his shoulder just in time to see a guard taking aim for Otto. He threw up a hand and the guard’s gun jammed right as he pulled the trigger. The whole squad disappeared in a laser lights show explosion.

“Jack,” Otto said with a crooked smile, much more confident than someone who had almost just died should be, “There’s always a back door.”

More shouts grew louder and another pair of guards rounded into the hall in front of them. Jack shared a look with Otto before springing into action again. Dodging bullets, they leaped over the knocked-out guards. Otto snagged a gun from one of them and fired over his shoulder.

“Look out!” Jack pulled Otto aside by the collar as a laser whizzed by right where his head was barely a second before. The guard took aim again but Jack concentrated on his gun and it fell to pieces in his hands. 

“That’s two you owe me now,” Jack said, just as Otto fired a shot aimed behind him. Jack turned around as a guard clutched his arm and fell.

“Actually just one,” Otto said.

Jack realized then that they were surrounded. Guards pressed in from both sides, guns up, blocking all routes of escape. He stood back to back with Otto, his hands raised in what felt like a pathetically inadequate fighting stance. Behind him, Otto swung his gun between targets, clearly outmatched.

“Now what?” Otto shout-whispered over his shoulder.

“You’re asking me?” Jack replied. He didn’t doubt that he could dismantle all the guards guns, but that still left them, two less than physically imposing teenagers, versus two squads of trained security operatives. Jack didn’t like those odds.

“There,” Otto said, gesturing discreetly to the vent grate high in the wall, “We just need a distraction.”

“The vents?” Jack said between his teeth as the guards moved ever closer, “Really?”

“Oh come on,” Otto replied, “Don't tell me you haven't crawled through a vent shaft before. This is textbook stuff here.”

“Fine. But what’s our distraction?”

Otto waggled his gun. “Easy. Just follow my lead.”

Horrified that Otto was about to start seriously hurting people, Jack tried to stop him, “No– wait!”

But Otto had already pulled the trigger. A laser zapped the overhead light and it went dark in a shower of sparks. He hit the other lights in rapid succession- zap zap zap! The windowless hall went pitch dark in a matter of moments. Shouts of confusion came from guards in both squads. A heartbeat later, a volley of lasers erupted from both sides. Guards shouted as stray bullets hit the opposite squads. Jack heard the vent grate clattering to the floor. He squinted, trying to find Otto in the darkness.

“You coming?” Otto extended a hand down from the vent. Jack could barely see him save for the bright white hair and flashy grin. He took one last glance at the chaos behind him before grabbing hold of Otto’s outstretched arm and pulling himself up.

Together they crawled through the cramped space in silence, echoes of the calamity they caused fading behind them.

“Now what?” Jack whispered, stifling a cough. Turns out air vents got rather dusty. 

“Now we find the back door,” Otto replied without looking back.

“And how are we supposed to do that, supposing that it even exists?” Jack asked.

“The guards have some sort of electronic coms on them right? I can almost sense them. Can you locate their signals?”

Jack concentrated for a moment and the electric signals from the communication devices the guards used popped up like little beacons in his mind’s eye. They all seemed to be moving toward one point.

“Yeah, got them.”

“And I suspect the majority of them are all moving toward the same location?” Otto continued.

“Yeah they are… how did you know?” 

“It’s doubtless they know we are in the ventilation system. Seeing as they can’t pursue us in here, and they likely won’t take any offensive measures from out there for fear of accidentally killing us, they are gathering their forces at what they believe is our most likely destination. In other words, the place where they would least like us to be,” Otto said.

It took Jack a moment to understand just what Otto was getting at, but his face lifted when it clicked into place. “The back door!”

“Bingo. So here’s what we’re gonna do...” 

\- - -

The lights at the far end of the hall to the back door suddenly went dark. The head of security furrowed her brow but kept her position at the head of the amassed remaining Smart Tower security force. She knew that many of her men scoffed at how seriously she took this threat- it was just two teenagers loose in the basement after all- but she knew better than to underestimate Jack Blank. Teenager or not, he was perhaps the largest security threat to the Imagine Nation. Even on an island of super powered beings, his power was the one she disliked, and though she’d never admit it, feared, the most.

She made eye contact with two men to her right. 

“Delta Team, investigate the disturbance and report back.” They followed her order wordlessly, and slipped silently down the hall. She watched them carefully, following their movements until they disappeared into a room at the very end of the long hall.

It was eerily silent for a time. Next to her, the men started to look bored. But something didn’t feel right. 

Beside her, her lieutenant spoke up. “Sir, there’s no way they could know about this exit, we should continue our search--”

Just then the head of security’s com crackled to life. A distressed voice came through the static. “Sir we’ve----they’re here--- help----”

The head of security pressed her finger to her ear. “Delta Team, repeat. Do you have eyes on the targets?”

The com was nothing but static. “Delta Team, do you copy?” 

Then a shout and a crash echoed down the hallway. The head of security gritted her teeth.

“All units engage. Move move!”

The guards poured down the hall, the head of security leading the charge. The end of the hall was completely dark save for light spilling out of one room. Another shout rang out, louder this time, coming from the room. 

The head of security rushed toward it, gun raised, her cohort following close behind. They entered the room and found rows and rows of computer workstations, but no sign of Delta Team or Blank. But there was plenty of room to hide. 

“Search the area. Guard the door.”

The head of security moved swiftly and stealthily through the rows of desks and monitors. Delta Team had to be here. Two men wouldn’t just vanish into thin air, it didn’t make any sense. Yet that nagging feeling still tugged at her gut. Something wasn’t right. 

Suddenly another set of lights flicked on, revealing another room behind a bank of windows. Inside, Delta Team banged on the soundproof glass, trapped. The head of security’s face dropped. She’d made a huge mistake. 

“All units retreat! It’s a trap!” she shouted, but before she could even utter the second syllable the door out slid shut and bolted into place. Her team crowded around it, tugging at the handle fruitlessly.

“Sir, we’re locked in!”

She cursed. They’d been played for fools. On the desk in front of her, a monitor caught her eye as it switched on. On the screen, there was just one word of green glowing text.

“Gotcha. ;)”

Face red with anger, she looked up. Through the sliver of a window on the door to the hall, she made eye contact with Jack. He was smiling triumphantly and barely suppressing a laugh. Beside him, the white-haired boy raised his hand in a mock salute before both of them dashed away.

– - -

Jack stumbled out into the alleyway, and let the relief wash over him. They’d made it out. He laughed triumphantly, the buzz of adrenaline still humming in his veins. As far as escapes went, that one had been quite successful. Easy, even. Jack had to admit, when they were working together, he and Otto made a pretty unstoppable team. 

“We made it. Have to admit it got a little hairy there in the middle You okay?

Otto panted, out of breath. He bent over and put his hands on his knees, but the relief on his face was plain to see.

“Little scratched up, but nothing out of the ordinary,” he said. 

“You still got the cure code?” Jack asks.

“Right here.”

Finally something had gone right. And better still, this whole ordeal would be over soon. He’d fix Otto, get the Rustov artifact, and be rid of him for good. But whether being rid of him meant locking him up Jack was less certain of than ever. A part of him had hoped from the beginning that he wouldn’t have to. And now that part was even louder.

“Well let's go fix your head,” Jack said, still beaming. 

“Right, let’s.” Otto didn’t move from his bent-over position. Jack looked back at him quizzically.

“Uh, are you coming?”

“I would. If I could move my legs,” Otto said, more than a hint of strain in his voice. “Or my body in general.”

“The virus?” Jack asked, suppressing a chuckle 

“Yeah. I think so.” Otto frowned. 

“You weren’t kidding about losing control then. How long do you think it’ll last?” Jack asked.

“Maybe a few minutes. Maybe forever.”

“Guess we have no choice then.” Jack strided back toward Otto with a purpose, a smug smile on his face.

“Wh-what are you doing?” Otto asked, eyes darting nervously as Jack bent down in front of him.

“We can’t hang around here long. And we gotta get you there somehow,” Jack said, and swiftly hoisted him up over his shoulders piggy-back style. Otto’s grumbled complaints only made Jack smile harder.


	8. Cyberspaced Out

They arrived in Machina ten minutes later via a stolen– or as Jack insisted, _borrowed_ – motorbike. 

Otto had (thankfully) regained the use of his limbs on the ride over, and saved himself the embarrassment of being carried into futuristic looking building that Jack had brought him to, not that it wasn’t humiliating enough that he’d been rendered completely immobile in the first place. Otto felt like he’d done a good job of hiding how unsettled it truly made him. He’d been a prisoner in his own body before and he was not eager to repeat the experience. 

The lab they entered was almost as impressive as Smart's, but with less scary looking instruments and more holo screens. A regal woman came to greet them– well, at least her projected image did, her form shaped by the golden beams of light emitting from the small droid behind her. 

“Hello Jack. Who is your new friend?” she asked. 

Otto didn’t speak as Jack explained their peculiar situation with the virus. It surprised Otto how easily Jack managed to skirt around some of the more unsavory bits of the day’s events (like, say, blindsiding a best friend, and breaking and entering) in his retelling. Even more surprising was how unfazed the woman- who Otto had gathered was called Virtua- was by the whole tale. 

“A human-mecha hybrid?” She approached Otto. He shrank under her unsettlingly scrutinizing gaze, her hologram eyes narrowing as she leaned in closer. “Fascinating.”

“Well. Sort of.” Otto replied, shuffling uncomfortably.

Jack stepped in to his rescue. “We have the specialized antidote here.” Jack pulled the card out of his pocket. “I thought maybe we can upload the cure code in Cyberspace, seeing as well, normal ways won’t work.”

Virtua considered silently for a moment, her lips tight. “You may be right. We can certainly try. And the quicker the better. If word spreads that the Rustov virus is active on the island it will be pandemonium. I assume no one else knows?”

“Only Jazen,” Jack started, before mumbling, “... and Jonas Smart.”

The look she gave Jack could slice through metal. She snatched the card from his outstretched hand. “Then it’s imperative that we hurry.”

She glided over to a bank of monitors and a whole section of the room sprung to life under her fingers. Otto could feel the hum of the data streams behind the glowing screens but was still infuriatingly unable to connect with them. Using his digital senses had become so natural that being cut off like this felt like he’d suddenly gone deaf. 

Virtua gestured for him to sit in a reclined chair surrounded by outlets and wires. It made him uneasy seeing how similar the setup was to Smart’s. That one that had accidentally caused him to wake up a potentially dangerous mechanical parasite inside Jack after all (which Jack was being notably mum about, despite how grave he made that situation seem before.) 

“By doing this we do run the risk of the virus spreading if the cure is not immediately effective.” Virtua didn’t look away from the monitors as she placed the card on a flat circular panel that seemed to scan it. 

“Well that’s reassuring.” Otto scooted himself into the chair, muscles tensed.

“My expertise is limited. It’s not often I work with a subject unlike any other I’ve ever seen on this island,” Virtua said, pausing mid keystroke, “Jack, where did you say that he came from again?”

“If the virus goes bonkers we’ll be able to contain it,” Jack clenched his jaw. “Probably.” 

Virtua raised an eyebrow but resumed working. After another moment, she turned and picked up a headset with a variety of wires cascading out the back and placed it on Otto’s head. 

“And what exactly are you going to do with this?” he asked.

Virtua ignored him. “If these readings are correct, I don’t believe we will require the typical bi-org sensory deprivation measures.”

Otto thought he saw a hint of a smirk on her projected face. Jack looked less confident.

“I don’t know if that’s–”

“Let us begin.” She entered one final keystroke, and Otto’s vision went dark. 

A moment later he was falling, no, flying through a familiar blackness. Around him, glowing digital structures started to form, just like they did when HIVEmind pulled him into the digital mindscape. But this time, rather than just staying as wireframes in a void, the structures solidified into a real landscape that took form pixel by pixel around him.

Even without his full senses, he could tell how amazing it was that a virtual world could have this level of complexity. Every other network he’d spent time inside couldn’t compare. It was like moving from a shack into the Taj Mahal. 

Barely a blink of an eye later, he found himself in a nearly identical lab as the one he just left. Jack and Virtua flickered into appearance beside him, Virtua no longer a hologram but instead a fully solid-looking figure. 

Jack seemed surprised, and maybe a bit relieved, to find him there in one piece. 

“Welcome to Cyberspace,” he said, “It’s a--”

“Living virtual realm built within the island’s network?” Otto guessed.

“Uh, yeah. Pretty much.”

Otto smiled. “Cool.” 

“No time for pleasantries,” Virtua snapped, picking up where she left off on the duplicate bank of monitors. “In here we should be able to administer the cure more easily. Somewhat like a biological medicine in the analog world.” She touched the pad where she’d scanned the memory card with the cure in the real world. A glowing virtual look-alike hovered out of the surface.

Otto stood up from the chair. “So how exactly does this--”

He stopped short as another figure flickered into existence beside Otto. For a moment it was just a generic blue wireframe outline. Then the polygons filled in and another figure stood there in the lab with them-- an exact duplicate of Otto, staring back at him.

“Hello Otto,” HIVEmind said out of the Otto clone, his voice the same regulated digital tone as always, “ I am s–%(*@(*4**. Still–#*5798#*&$*$.”

Jack and Virtua shared a look of utter confusion. 

Otto gaped. “ _HIVEmind?_ Uh, what’s with the copycat act?”

“I d@(*$$() control the ^@!(*&$*#*#,” HIVEmind-Otto flickered wildly as his voice glitched, like a broken computer screen. Otto glanced down at his own hands– they were flickering too.

 _“Fascinating,”_ Virtua whispered perhaps a bit too emphatically.

Jack ignored her. “Otto? What’s happening?” 

Otto frowned. “Jack, HIVEmind. HIVEmind, Jack,” Otto gestured to his look-alike. “Usually he doesn't look like this. Probably a side effect of riding around in my head so long. We can ask him when we get rid of the virus. Which, ah, I think you might want to hurry up with because”--flicker-–”I think being in here is”--flicker–-”making it worse.” 

Otto gritted his teeth. His stomach did a flip with each glitch. It felt like his consciousness was trying to rip itself back out of the digital world without his permission, and it was taking everything his busted abilities could do to keep himself in Cyberspace.

Jack turned to Virtua. “Is it ready yet?”

She cradled the hovering card-replica in her palm and pulled it away from the panel. “We’ll just have to see, won’t we?”

“Still no card slot, remember?” Otto’s voice wavered. His legs started to shake beneath him– that is, when they were actually still there. Next to him, HIVEmind looked quite like a spliced frame of a video that froze halfway through buffering. Otto wondered if he looked the same.

Virtua approached steadily, card glowing intensely above her palm. When she was close enough, she turned her palm outward and directed it toward Otto. The card left her hand and hovered in front of his chest for a moment before it dissolved into a beam of light that permeated through him. As it did, the glitching stopped. Otto started to smile. It seemed like it had worked.

Then Otto screamed.

– - -

The world around Jack shuddered. The lab glitched in and out of view, revealing in flashes the strings of number and letters and symbols that made up the code of the system architecture holding it all together. Like a digital thunderstorm, nonsense code began flying around them in a whirlwind, whole chunks of the world disappearing at random.

“What's happening?” Jack shouted. Otto had gone completely stiff, head thrown back, eyes blank.

“The cure is working, but it’s taking time to upload,” Virtua pulled up a holographic screen with the progress bar, her eyebrows tightening. “Right now its at 30 percent. The virus is fighting back it's-- it's like nothing I've ever seen. All of Cyberspace is in danger.” 

Jack stretched out a hand toward Otto. “We've got to contain it–” 

_Give up Jack._

Jack cringed, stumbling as he grabbed his head. Khalix fought for control the moment he’d tried to help Otto. Whatever Otto was doing to the digital world, it was shorting out his powers too. That, or making Khalix strong enough to overcome them.

The damage was spreading. More and more of the digital world was simply falling apart, with Otto at the epicenter. 

Virtua sent out a call to the other AI’s that Jack could barely interpret through the pain Khalix was causing him. A moment later, the digital consciousnesses of other mechas flickered into existence around the lab, each with a varying degree of panic on their faces. They’d come to help. 

“Contain the damage, but do not kill him.” Virtua instructed. But there was a hint in her voice that perhaps that assessment could change. All around her the other AIs started weaving code against the storm, holding the world around them together the best they could. 

The walls of the lab flickered. Flashes of different landscapes popped into view- a moment of the desert on one side, a blink of rolling hills on the other. Other times it just dissolved completely, zapping back to nothing but a glowing wireframe.

Jack reached out to help again but a streak of pain sent him to his knees. The virus was making Khalix stronger, and the more he opened himself up to help, the more powerful he could feel Khalix becoming. 

_You’re going to lose Jack. Who would have guessed that there would be an even more perfect host for us than you?_

But maybe he wouldn’t even need to help. The Mechas were winning. 

Virtua enlarged her holo-screen, displaying the progress for them to see. It got to 78%. Then Otto vanished.

In the analog world, Otto's eyes flew open. He shot up, reached clumsily for Virtua’s monitor, placed his palm on the screen-- and the room went dark.

The digital world shook and went silent. The storm disappeared, replaced by a hazy, dim glow. Around them, the ravaged lab stabilized, looking more or less like a disaster zone. Two steps to Jack’s right, the floor simply didn’t exist anymore, instead it opened to an infinite void below.

“What was that?” Jack asked, though he had a bad feeling he already knew.

Virtua turned to him, face as impassive as ever. “The main electricity connection to the data center is down. The backup generators will hold temporarily.”

“Mr Malpense has #(&$@(*)&)(#,” HIVEmind said, looking just as surprised to still be there as Jack was to see him, his appearance still uncannily identical to Otto’s.

“Wait, _what_ did Otto do?” Jack asked, the pieces falling to place in his head.

“Lost (*@79437884#*$* of his body,” HIVEmind said matter of factly, his proper demeanor somewhat diminished by the constant glitching, “He $*(394893# your help.”

“Oh no. How much longer until the cure is finished?” Jack turned to Virtua. 

“It's 84% uploaded,” she replied as the world shuddered again.

Jack took a deep breath, ignoring the pain ripping through his head and his chest. “Okay. You guys hold it together in here. I'm going out there to try to stop whatever he's doing.”

Jack closed his eyes. 

And opened them in the analog world. 

The lab was more intact than the one he left in the digital world, but it was shrouded in a similar dim glow. None of the lights were on except for the towering bank of monitors. In front of them, the silhouetted figure of Otto stood motionless, palm on the nearest screen. 

Jack dared to connect with the data stream for just the briefest moment. That was all he needed to realize that Otto was in the process of taking down the entire Imagine Nation network.

“Otto! Stop!”

Otto turned over his shoulder and stared back with blank eyes. He didn’t stop attacking the network, or rather, the virus controlling him didn’t. Jack walked toward him slowly, the closer he got the more he could feel Khalix stirring. Jack swallowed, suppressing him as best he could. He had to stop the virus before the whole Imagine Nation was infected, but using his powers meant he’d risk giving control to Khalix.

Jack grabbed at Otto’s shoulders, intending to tackle him away from the network hub. If he couldn’t fight Otto digitally, he’d have to sever the connection another way. Otto raised an arm and blocked him with surprising force, tossing Jack aside. Otto moved with a robotic precision, his features eerily expressionless.

Jack knew that connecting to the digital hub and stopping Otto that way was pointless– Otto had already proven his superiority when it came to the computer stuff. In desperation Jack did what he promised himself he’d never do again. He reached out with what power he had left and tried to shut down the device in Otto’s head from the inside. 

That got Otto's attention. With a mindless automacy, Otto pressed his influence back at Jack with full force, and they engaged in an invisible struggle of wills. Jack felt Otto reaching straight for Khalix, the virus feeding his strength even more. Khalix pressed for control even harder than before, and Jack cried out as he felt his consciousness slipping.

 _“93%”_ Virtua's voice said in his head. A screen flickered to life on the other side of the lab with the progress display. _“Hold on.”_

_Trying,_ Jack responded, realizing with horror that he couldn’t even make his mouth move to say it aloud. 

Jack kept up his assault on the device in Otto’s head, knowing full well that the more he diverted his powers away from suppressing Khalix, the more likely it was that he’d lose control. But he had to slow Otto down. The network was seriously corrupted and Jack knew that if the virus seized full control it would shut down the cure code transmitter, making all the Mechas susceptible to the infection again. He couldn’t let that happen. 

Around the data center, the lights flickered and popped, processors buzzed angrily, monitors flashed wildly– everything electronic was subject to their digital battle. Jack grimaced as his strength waned even further, he couldn’t keep fighting the onslaught from within and without. He’d just have to hope now that if Khalix did take control that the cure would kick in fast enough and Otto would be able to stop him

Jack could feel himself really slipping then. The thought of being a prisoner in his own body again drowned his thoughts in fear. Why hadn’t he just ripped Khalix out when he had the chance? 

Khalix’s triumphant laugh echoed in his skull. _I said you’d pay for what you did, Jack._

Frantically, he tried to disable the parasite as he had done to all the other Rustov, but it didn’t work. The virus had made Khalix strong enough to resist. 

_97%_ the screen flashed. Otto showed no signs of returning to normalcy.

Jack fell to his knees. The onslaught of Otto and Khalix together was too much. He felt the feeling fade from his arms and legs, encroaching inwards. 

_99%_

Jack felt it as his body stopped being his. He watched through his own eyes as he stood up. He screamed internally as he moved toward the monitors, helpless as his hands raised to help tear apart the Imagine Nation from the inside out.

_100%_


	9. Tables Turned

Otto blinked once, twice, and realized what he was doing. He dropped his hand from the screen as if it had burnt him. His head throbbed, the strain of over exerting his half-busted abilities still lingering even after he’d cut his connection to the network. 

Beside him, Jack looked at him with empty, murderous eyes. 

“Khalix, I presume?” Otto raised an eyebrow.

“In the flesh,” the sneering voice replied with Jack’s mouth.

“Well you know what they say about tables turning,” Otto said, hiding the note of exhaustion in his voice, “Time to get inside your head.” He grabbed Jack’s head between his hands in a decisive motion.

Otto wasted no time in extending his senses directly for Khalix. He attacked with the entirety of force he had left, searching for a way to disable him. 

_Jack’s pathetic powers didn’t work on me. And yours won’t either, boy._

For a moment, Otto worried that Khalix was right. The little robot was heavily shielded and actively diverting him away from his internal systems. But this wasn’t the first time Otto had been faced with technology he’d never encountered before, and as he probed deeper he felt his innate ability to understand machinery kick in. 

Khalix must have felt the change too, as his face immediately lost the look of smug satisfaction, replaced with a look of terrified shock. In rage, he tackled Otto to the ground, sending both of them tumbling into the lab machinery with a crash.

Otto clenched his teeth and closed his eyes, not letting his focus waver. A few more bruises were nothing compared to the fiery spikes of pain in his head. Khalix wrestled to get free of Otto’s grip but Otto held tight. Mentally, he squirmed his way past Khalix’s final defenses, and suddenly he understood exactly how to break him.

“I’m going to enjoy this,” Otto hissed.

Otto wrecked the parasite with an efficient precision. Khalix’s digital screams lasted only a few moments before going completely silent. The parasite wasn’t quite dead. But it might as well be.

He opened his eyes, letting out a huge breath as he pushed himself out from under Jack and slumped against a wall of processors. 

Beside him, Jack came back with a groan and pulled himself up next to Otto. His clothes were all a mess and he was covered in scratches. Otto figured he couldn’t look much better himself. He felt like his insides had been through a blender.

The room was entirely dark save for a few stray beams of sunlight (they'd done quite a number on the electricity, it seemed) and the computer next to them vaguely emitted a stream of smoke. 

“That was close.” Otto said finally.

“More than close. I think we might have fried everything electric on the island.” Jack replied, exhaustion evident.

“Oh. Whoops. Sorry.” Otto said. “The cure worked though.”

“Yeah. It did.” Jack smiled meekly. “How's your head?”

Otto extended his senses tentatively. Things were much clearer now, as if he’d just gotten over a head cold, but still not 100%. 

“Virus free. Still a little busted thanks to your handiwork there. But functioning.” Otto smiled back. “How's your parasite?”

“Silent. A little busted. Thanks to you.”

Otto sighed. Despite everything, in that moment he felt strangely at peace. Just sitting there, too exhausted to move, having almost just destroyed the world, shoulder to shoulder with probably the only person who could have stopped him from doing so.

“I don’t know about you, but I’m getting kind of tired of malignant AI’s taking over my body.” Otto said, chuckling weakly.

“You could say that again,” Jack replied.

They shared a look, and a realization. For perhaps the first time in his life, Otto felt that someone else truly understood what he’d gone through. Because, well, it was the first time in his life that he’d met someone who’d actually been through it.

He’d gotten used to the thought that, without question, he was the only teenager in the world that had been designed to be nothing more than a host for a seriously evil ulterior intelligence. That no one else could possibly know how terrifying it was to have your mind stolen and your strength used against the people you loved. But where he had Overlord, Jack had Khalix. They’d been fighting the same fight on different fronts. Struggling alone for years without knowing that out there, there was someone who shared the same burden.

Jack had been right all along. They were the same.

Otto opened his mouth. He had to tell Jack everything, no matter the consequences. Jack deserved to know who he was. What he was. He deserved to know that he wasn’t alone too. 

He tried to decide how to start. “Jack, I–”

A digitized voice in both their heads interrupted him.

_Jack. We need you in here._ Virtua sounded worried.

“What now?” Jack asked, a joking lilt in his exasperated tone. He turned to Otto with a knowing half smile. The smile of a friend.

Otto swallowed his confession. “We better go find out.”

– - -

In Cyberspace they reappeared in the semi-destroyed digital lab. A concerned looking Virtua and the Otto-twin HIVEmind were there to greet them.

“Everything alright in here?” Jack asked Virtua.

“The damage was contained. It seems your cure actually worked.”

Otto saw what might have been a hint of a smile on her face. Beside her, HIVEmind stood awkwardly, still in the form of a perfect Otto duplicate.

“HIVEmind!” Otto smiled wide and approached his lookalike. “You okay buddy?” 

“I am fully operational again, Mr. Malpense. But I have some concerns-”

“So what's the deal with looking like me all of a sudden? It's kinda wigging me out.” Otto walked a circle around HIVEmind’s new form. It wasn’t everyday that you got a good look at what you looked like from behind. Or ever.

“This digital environment requires a more physical manifestation than my usual likeness. It seems I have taken this form by default. But-”

“Weird.” 

Virtua stepped over, pulling up a holographic display full of scrolling code. “I have analyzed your friend, Otto. He is much more advanced than any other system not of Imagine Nation origin, and even some systems here. But I did find some troubling code–”

“I know– We know,” Otto stopped her. He figured that she must have discovered the bits of Overlord seed code that had allowed HIVEmind to recreate himself after being deleted. But Otto didn’t quite feel up to explaining the whole Overlord debacle right then and there. 

“So, does that mean that HIVEmind is like you guys? A Mecha?” 

Virtua raised an eyebrow. “Not quite.” She turned toward the duplicate Otto. “But given a mecha body and a touch more advanced social conditioning code, you could live quite happily as one of us here.” An emotion like shock displayed on Otto-HIVEmind’s face. Otto wondered if he was making the exact same impression himself.

“He's not the only one who could use more advanced social conditioning code,” Jack added under his breath, giving Otto a smirk.

Otto turned toward him, folding his arms. “And what exactly is that supposed to insinuate?”

Jack opened his mouth to fire off what would probably have been another witty retort, but was cut off by Otto-HIVEmind stepping between them with flustered urgency.

“Mr. Malpense! Please!”

“Okay okay!” Otto threw up his hands in defense, “Don’t blow your circuits. If you guys didn’t call us back in here for a round of playful banter then what did you need us for?”

HIVEmind took a moment to regain his composure before continuing. “I briefly made contact with HIVE while the security grid was… otherwise occupied. It seems the artifact has activated in tandem with your glitches. It has planted the virus throughout the entirety of the HIVE systems. If any piece of HIVE technology reaches the mainland, the infection could spread worldwide, crippling every computerized system on the planet.” 

Otto didn’t miss a beat. “Oh. Huh. Well that's concerning.”

“Concerning?!” Jack threw his hands up in disbelief. “The whole world is at stake! Again!” 

Otto turned to Jack and put a casual hand on his shoulder. “Relax. We have the cure code. And HIVE is completely isolated from all mainland contact so it’s not like the virus will be spreading anytime soon.”

“ _HIVE_?” Jack asked innocently. Otto’s hand dropped. Whoops.

“Mr. Malpense,” HIVEmind stepped between them again. Otto had a bad feeling about what was coming next.

“This is the part where you tell me that something is actually going terribly wrong as we speak, right?”

“Directly prior to the time which all systems on this island went offline and I lost contact with HIVE, a Shroud had just been deployed. I believe its mission was to go looking for you.”

Otto cursed under his breath. “Where's it heading?”

“London.”

“Well then,” Otto sighed, and turned back to Jack with a certain glint in his eye. “Jack- what's the fastest jet you have on this island?”

Jack gave him a very dubious eyebrow raise. “...Why?”

Otto flashed a toothy grin. “We're going to need it.”


	10. Plans Changed

Jack scrambled up the rusty fire escape ladder of a hangar back in Galaxis. He looked over his shoulder to see Otto a number of rungs below, lagging behind.

“This would be a lot easier if we hadn’t fried just about everything on the electric grid.” Otto looked up at him with a scowl.

“Cmon, keep up.” Jack pulled himself onto the platform and stood up. “Once Smart realizes that we’re not at the data center he’ll be here with the cavalry in tow.”

“Do you mean an actual cavalry? Or a metaphorical one?” Otto asked. A perfectly legitimate question in the Imagine Nation, Jack had to admit. “And I’d be going faster but it turns out that getting tackled into a wall hurts quite a bit.”

“Sorry,” Jack replied, and reached an arm down to help Otto up. He suspected that Otto wasn’t really that angry about being slammed into a wall since it had been Khalix, but still Jack couldn’t help but feel a bit bad.

Otto grabbed hold of Jack’s hand. “I’m the one who should be sorry,” he said as Jack pulled him up beside him on the platform, “I did almost wreck just about everything you care about.”

“That wasn’t you.”

“What?” Otto smirked. “You aren’t going to say it was all a part of my plan this whole time and throw me in jail? Come on, you’re losing your edge, Blank.”

Jack jimmied the lock on the nearest warehouse-style window. Locked. He tried a second one and was again disappointed.

He jumped as he heard a crash of glass shattering. Jack turned to catch Otto with his foot through the windowpane. Otto shrugged his shoulders off Jack’s look, and reached in and flipped the lock. He looked like he was about to dive right through when Jack responded.

“Believe it or not I trust you, Otto.” Jack said quietly. Otto pulled back from the window but didn’t look up. “I still don’t know why you were stealing that artifact in the first place. But you saved the Imagine Nation, and you saved me. I think that’s enough to prove you’re not a bad guy.”

Otto turned to Jack, his face unreadable. He opened his mouth as if to say something, but then closed it and turned back to the window.

“Let’s get going.”

Jack ignored his concern and stepped up to push the broken window open. The pair climbed through and jumped down on the catwalk that wrapped around the hangar. Jack scanned the dark hall– no sign of movement as far as he could tell, but he lamented the lack of his mechanical sense. Without it, there was no way to know for sure if they were alone.

Beside him Otto looked to be doing similar checks, his face scrunching in frustration as Jack felt him try to reach out digitally to their completely inert surroundings.

On the floor below them there was a sleek white jet, one of Smart’s latest and greatest. If what Smart’s incessant ads had been touting was true, this thing would get them to London in a third the time of what it would normally take. Just what they needed.

The two slipped down a ladder to the floor and started toward the jet. Without the hum of anything electric, there was only the sounds of their footfalls echoing through the vast hall as they ran for the plane.

“Is this thing even gonna work?” Otto asked.

Jack hoped so. He reached out to the plane with his powers and thankfully the engines revved to life. A staircase folded down from the door as if inviting them in.

“We’re in luck. Looks like we didn’t fry everything,” Jack said, swinging himself up the stairs and into the plane. “I turned it on but that’s about as much as I can manage without breaking it. You gonna be able to fly this thing?”

“Probably.” Otto followed right behind him, heading straight for the cockpit.

Otto sat in the captain's seat and began scrutinizing the panel of meters and switches. Jack slid into the seat next to him, taking a minute to have a look around their getaway vehicle. Smart had spared no expense in the plane’s interior cabin– plush white leather reclining seats, wood accents throughout, a hint of gold trim that he didn’t doubt was real– but as he connected with the technical systems he found that underneath it all, the plane had the power of a rocket and the weapons systems of a battleship. He smiled. Perfect.

Beside him, Otto had his eyes closed, brow furrowed in concentration. The plane still didn’t move.

Outside the cockpit window, Jack saw a lone guard peek out of an office on the far side of the hangar. The noise of the plane must have alerted him. He looked like he was making a phone call.

“Otto, we should really get going...”

“Hold it– almost got it–”

Suddenly the radio on the dash crackled to life.

“Jack BLANK!! Get OUT of my plane THIS INSTANT!!” Smart shrieked, his shrill voice instantly recognizable.

“Looks like he’s not a huge fan of the ‘borrow the jet without asking’ plan,” Jack groaned, not bothering to give Smart an actual reply over the radio. Apparently he’d gotten his communications systems functioning again. Well, functioning just enough to be a huge pain.

Suddenly the plane lurched forward.

“Got it!” Otto opened his eyes triumphantly as they began moving.

Jack smiled. There was no way Smart would be fast enough to stop them now. Except–

“Otto,” Jack said, face dropping as he looked out the front window again, a horrible realization coming over him.

“What?”

“Otto, the doors. The hangar doors. They’re supposed to be automatic, but…”

Together they looked out the cockpit window. Ahead of them, two massive steel doors. And they were picking up speed, heading straight for them.

“Can’t you open them?” Otto asked, frantic.

“No! All the locking mechanisms are electronic! It’s no good without any power on,” he replied focusing his power toward the doors even though he knew it was a futile effort.

He got ready to switch his strength to helping slow the jet down, resigned that this would just have to be the most botched attempt at a mission in the Imagine Nation history, but Otto stopped him.

“Jack, wait.” Otto tilted his head pointedly toward the weapons control systems on the dash in front of Jack.

“You can’t be serious,” Jack replied as the jet picked up speed, but yet he still took the controls, fingers hovering over the triggers.

Otto smiled. “Deadly.”

– - -

The security squad formed ranks around the perimeter of the hangar. From his office, Jonas Smart watched through a smart cam that hovered above them, his hands folded on his massive desk. The instant that all the power on the island had failed, he knew that it had to be the doing of Jack and that irritating white haired kid. They had slipped out of his grasp in the Tower but he wouldn’t let them go so easily again.

“On my mark, move in,” he instructed, pressing a button on the desk to speak into a radio microphone. On screen, a guard nodded. Jack Blank had gotten away with a great many things, but this was not going to be one of them. Not when Smart had put so much work, effort, love even, into that prototype jet.

He scrutinized the closed hangar doors on the fuzzy screen. It wasn’t his usual holo-tech, but it was the best he could do after a total power wipe. Smart had assumed that Jack would make some kind of half-baked escape attempt, that’s why he hadn’t wasted any time in getting a squad of security forces to the hangars. Now they were trapped like rats. Sure the jet had power, but without the hangar doors operational, they weren’t going anywhere.

Smart pulled the microphone closer, a grim smile on his face. “Three– two– one– m–”

An explosion erupted through the hangar doors, filling the radio channel with static. The security forces scattered, knocked back by the fireball that momentarily blinded the camera lens. Smart gripped the sides of his monitor in shock as the picture came back into focus. Through the mangled metal gap, a speeding white jet– his speeding white jet– rocketed through, its wheels already lifting off the ground.

“No…” Smart hissed through gritted teeth.

Brusquely, he zoomed the camera in on the cockpit. In it, Jack screamed, wide-eyed. Next to him, the white haired boy sporting a wicked grin. The jet’s radio crackled to life and his office filled with their voices.

“AAHHHHHHHHHHHHH–!!”

“WOOHOOOOO!!”

A moment later, the jet shot into the sky over the ocean and the sound crackled out. Smart pounded his fists on his desks, face turning an unseemly shade of red as they vanished into the atmosphere.


	11. Truths

Otto looked out the window as empty ocean sped by far beneath them. “What's our ETA in London?” 

_22 minutes_ , HIVEmind replied over the plane’s intercom system.

“And the Shroud’s?”

_17 minutes._

Jack cursed under his breath. 

Otto sat in one of the huge leather chairs in the plane’s cabin. Jack stared at his hands in the chair facing his. With HIVEmind’s help, Otto barely had to monitor the jet’s systems. At first it made him just a little uneasy– this thing was fast, even more so than the Shrouds– but it was also extremely well designed. It wasn’t about to fall out of the sky anytime soon, even on semi-autopilot.

Otto closed his eyes and did some mental calculations.

“Hold on,” he said, “Change course- thirteen degrees north. We can’t beat them there, but we might be able to stop them from the air, somewhere above, eh, Spain probably.”

“That still doesn't leave us much time,” Jack said.

“Approximately eleven minutes once we make contact. And that's hoping that they haven't radioed with anyone on the ground by that point.” Otto replied with a sigh. There were just too many ways that this could go horribly wrong. Not to mention that even if they succeeded, it still meant he’d have to explain Jack to his friends, and vice versa. 

Otto lifted a hand idly to touch the Rustov mark on his face. It had faded dramatically since the initial burn in Smart’s lab and the subsequent purging of the virus, but it still left the hint of a shadow. Just another traumatic experience that he’d have to try to explain. He knew even his friends could only be so understanding when it came to yet another tale of some new evil force exploiting his weird abilities. Even with everything they’d seen, Otto never expected them to get it, and this time was no exception. He noticed that Jack was watching him and let his hand fall.

“So.” Jack looked him straight in the eye. “HIVE. Is that where you're from?”

Otto grimaced. He’d hoped that Jack had forgotten about HIVEmind’s little spillage of the beans back at the Data Center. 

“If I told you I'd have to kill you.”

Jack leaned back, looking almost hurt. “That sounds like something someone tied to a chair in my basement would say.”

Otto frowned. He folded his arms and avoided Jack’s pressing gaze. He knew Jack deserved answers, and he owed him more than the cagey games he’d played when Jack first caught him. Otto clenched his jaw. There weren’t many people that could make him feel this guilty.

“Yeah it’s where I'm from. Satisfied?” 

“Well… What is it?” Jack asked.

“A school. For... exceptional people,” Otto replied through his teeth.

“People like you?”

“Well I'm the exception to the exceptional. Nobody else has _superpowers_ in the capital S sense of the word if that's what you're asking. Not lately anyway.” 

“So what is it a school for then? Spies?”

“Not exactly.” Otto shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

A wave of turbulence rocked the jet. Otto reached out semi-subconsciously to steady it and sensed Jack doing the same, their digital presences brushing against each other in the process. They both recoiled immediately. Jack’s powers felt familiar to Otto now, but the touch was still strangely intimate, closer than holding hands. Jack’s cheeks went slightly rosy as they withdrew. Otto looked down as he felt his own face heat up.

Jack cleared his throat. “So I guess your head's all fixed then?” 

Otto ran a hand through his hair. “Not quite. HIVEmind has done his best from inside, but there's still some stuff in the hardware that's scrambled and that's not exactly our specialty.”

“I could fix it for you, you know,” Jack said quietly, “I mean, I know pretty well how your system works now.”

“This isn’t just a computer in my head, you know. It's _me_.” Otto fiddled nervously with his fingers. “I saw my source code – I _have_ source code. It’s kind of freaking me out to be honest.” 

“But if this virus gets out of hand we'll need you at full power to stop it. Trust me. I can do it. It would only be returning the favor.” Jack tapped his chest, right over where Khalix slept, disabled, inside him.

Otto worried it would come to this ever since Jack busted his head. It would have to get fixed somehow and there really wasn’t another way-- Jack really was the only person who could repair the damage. 

Earlier that day when Jack had first done the damage, Otto imagined what he’d have to have done to convince him to fix it-- threats, blackmail, the usual options. He never expected to be in a position where Jack would just offer it. 

And he never expected to be in a position where he’d want to decline that offer.

Giving Jack access to his head very likely meant giving Jack access to his memories. Getting his abilities fully functional again meant Jack knowing about what HIVE really was, what he really was, all of it.

He knew it might mean the end of their burgeoning friendship. And, selfish as it was, Otto didn’t want to give that up.

_Five minutes to interception_ , HIVEmind announced over the intercom.

Otto stood to return to the cockpit.

Jack got up, half blocking the way. “It’s now or never, just let me fix it.” 

“I’m fine.” Otto brushed past him.

Jack turned and followed him toward the front of the plane. “If this is about you still hiding secrets, get over it. I mean, you don’t expect me to change my mind about you now that I stole a jet for you, right?”

“We _borrowed_ a jet. Which I’ve been flying perfectly well with my head as-is.” He raised a hand with flourish as he took full control back from HIVEmind. He winced. The jet dipped briefly before righting. 

Jack raised an accusatory eyebrow. “Please don’t make me fight this virus with you not at full power just because of your stupid pride.”

That made Otto stop. He imagined how he’d feel if Jack needed his help in the fight to come and he couldn’t give it. 

That is, if Jack would still fight beside him after the truth was out. 

Otto took a deep breath, turned slowly, and finally looked Jack in the eye. “Okay fine. Do it.” 

“You'll have to trust me. I know there’s stuff in there you still don’t want me to know for whatever reason. But you can't block me out or else I might end up breaking stuff again,” Jack cautioned, moving his hands into place on either side of Otto’s head.

“Yeah, I know.” 

“Ready? Here goes.” Jack shut his eyes and Otto felt tendrils of power budding beneath Jack’s fingers.

“Jack,” Otto said, barely above a whisper. Jack opened his eyes and pulled back just slightly.

“What?” 

“We're friends right?” 

“Uh yeah. I guess we are, huh. Why?”

“Well. I'm trusting you here. It's not something I do very often. And I'm hoping– _really hoping_ – that you can trust me too.”

That stupid smile tugged at the corners of Jack’s lips again. “You saved the Imagine Nation and you saved my life. I trust you.”

“I'm glad,” Otto replied, his own smile a weak echo of Jack’s, “Just, uh, keep that in mind I guess.”

“What are you getting at Malpense?” 

“Fix my head, Blank. You'll see.”

Otto took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and let down his barriers. He felt Jack’s presence slip into his head and gently find its way into the mechanics there, a far cry from how it felt the first time Jack invaded. With the mechanical links still broken it seemed his memories were safe for now, but Otto knew all that would change the instant Jack put the pieces back together.

Jack worked quickly, as promised. Otto felt little dislodged pieces of semi-organic nodes and connections shifting back into place, and with each of them a little more of his senses returned. He tried to keep his mind blank as if that would somehow prevent what he knew was about to happen. 

He felt a twinge as a connection missed its mark and Jack’s hands shifted slightly. Without thinking, he’d let himself tense up and resist. He took a shaky breath and forced himself to relax again. Another slip up and Jack might break him for good. That thought certainly didn’t help the bubble of anxiety rising in his stomach though.

With each piece that shifted into place the clock ticked down toward the moment of truth. Would Jack still trust him after he knew who he truly was? Otto had to believe he would, but that didn’t stop the slight tremor in his hands. Jack came from an island of heroes, and Otto, well…

Without warning the final node shifted into place. Information started flowing instantly, like a dam being released. Otto pushed Jack back an instant later, shoving him out of his head and down to the floor simultaneously. 

Otto opened his eyes slowly, hoping for the best. Jack looked at him from where he’d fallen in the plane’s aisle, his face shifting from shock to confusion to cold accusation. It sliced straight through Otto’s gut. 

Otto opened his mouth to try to explain but the words died on his tongue. 

Jack’s eyes narrowed. “HIVE... Higher Institute for _Villainous Education_?” 

Otto forced a chuckle. “Not the name I would have chosen either, but you do realize you live in a place called the Imagine Nation, so…”

Jack pushed himself to his feet, eyes dark as he stepped toward Otto. “I knew it. I knew it the minute I found you stealing the artifact from that museum. You’re a _villain_.”

Otto shrank back. “Sort of. But I don't prescribe to everything my school teaches.”

He felt Jack’s power, the same power that had just been so gentle, lash out and press into him like the edge of a knife. Otto was ready this time though, and with his head fixed up there was no way he was going to let Jack go on a temper-fueled rampage through his mechanics again. He gritted his teeth and pushed back, their invisible influences creating a force between them as if they were like-sided magnets.

“Jack! You said you trusted me, remember?” Otto pleaded as he stepped back, shrinking away from the pressure of Jack’s rage. He was able to keep Jack at bay for the moment, but at this rate Jack would overpower him. When it came to a battle of brute strength, Otto couldn’t deny that he was at a disadvantage. Well, without going after Khalix that was, but he decided he wouldn’t go that far, no matter what it came to.

“How could I trust you?” Jack stepped forward, pushing Otto back further toward the cockpit. “You’ve done nothing but lie since I found you. You’ve done awful things!” 

“But for the right reasons!” Otto hated how desperate he sounded. “Can’t you see-- why else would I be here trying to fix this mess?”

Jack just pressed harder. Wincing, Otto fought to keep the device in his head from breaking again, but he could feel his defenses slipping. He had to make Jack understand that despite everything, now he really did want to help. 

He started letting specific memories rise to the forefront of his thoughts, putting them on display in their weird technopathic connection– him and Jack’s dashing escape from Smart tower, Otto riding piggyback over Jack’s shoulders, the pair of them slumped against the wall after nearly destroying everything, Jack telling Otto that he trusted him at the hanger– and when that didn’t work Otto let his thoughts dissolve into pure emotion.

His fear and uncertainty and shame at being captured and being subject to a virus beyond his understanding. His dismissal of the Imagine Nation that turned to warm fondness. His hate for Jack that turned to cautious acceptance that turned to trust and even friendship. He tried to make Jack understand why he lied, the fear of losing his trust forever. Still Jack pressed on.

Otto didn’t think he could last much longer. He stumbled, his back bumping against the captain's chair.

Then a red light beeped on the radar. Concentration broken, Jack released him and they both resurfaced to the real world with a gasp. Jack stumbled backward, reeling, his face full of confusion.

The radar beeped again. Otto fumbled his way into the captain’s chair, and directed his attention out the front window. He squinted, searching, until finally he spotted it- the Shroud, not too far off in the clouds. He took the controls by hand to maneuver them closer.

Jack stepped up and put a hand on top of his. “Hands off. I’m taking you back to the Imagine Nation.”

“Jack…” Otto turned in the chair to look for any hint of forgiveness in Jack’s face. There wasn’t any. “Okay fine. Don’t trust me. I deserve it. But trust what you know about the virus. It’s real and it’s out there and you saw what it can do.”

Jack scowled silently a moment more. “That’s them?” he said finally, pointing out the window toward the Shroud.

“Yeah that’s them.”

“Then I’ll take it down,” Jack said, extending a hand.

“It’s shielded electromagnetically from interference. You can probably slow it down at best.” Otto replied. By the look of strain on Jack’s face, it seemed he’d discovered at least that much was true.

“I won’t let you get away with this.” Jack’s face was still full of loathing, his powers creeping around the edges of the device in Otto’s brain again.

“Get away with–ugh!” Otto turned to look Jack in the eye, utterly exasperated. “ _Jack_. Listen to me. Right now I am trying to stop the world from getting seriously wanged. If I had known that that stupid rock had some freaky alien disease in it that could infect organic supercomputers, I wouldn’t have touched it with a ten foot pole. I know you don’t believe that I’m trying to help but could you at least hold off on killing me until after we’ve saved the planet?”

Jack scrunched up his brow. “Why are you even bothering? Why would a villain save the world?”

Otto sighed. It seemed absolutely nothing would get through Jack’s thick head. 

“My education may be unconventional. But I’m not about to let the world end. Not when it’s in my power to stop it.” Otto pulled the card with the cure code out of his pocket. That last bit wasn’t entirely true. He had an idea, but in order to pull it off he needed more than just his own power– he needed Jack’s help. And by the unchanging look of dubious anger on Jack’s face, Otto guessed that it wouldn’t be easy to convince him. 

“Here-- the cure code.” Otto handed him the card. “You to take this, get on the Shroud, and wipe it clean. There should be a port in the dash. It looks like this.”

Otto held up a hand toward Jack and mentally showed him the interior of the Shroud. He focused in on the flight deck and then closer in on a port that would fit the card. A moment later he felt Jack recoil.

“What was that,” Jack said, cradling the side of his head. 

“I'm a little surprised it worked,” Otto said, mildly bemused. He turned back toward the controls, the Shroud growing larger by the second outside the cockpit window. “I'm getting us in position. They might start–”

He was interrupted as a bout of laser fire erupted from the Shroud, aimed right at them. Otto banked the jet hard, just barely dodging their shots before righting it into position again.

“--firing at us.” He finished with a frown. “There's a hatch on top. I'll get you over it. After that it’s up to you.”

The London skyline came into view below them on the horizon. They truly were cutting it close here. Otto dodged more laser fire as he maneuvered the jet in position directly above the Shroud. Satisfied, he got up and directed Jack toward the back of the jet. Otto opened the rear cargo hatch with a thought. The wind howled outside, 20,000 feet above the ocean below.

Jack stepped up to the edge.

“You ready?” Otto shouted over the wind.

“Why should I believe you?” Jack shouted back, looking out to where the Shroud hovered, directly below.

“What?”

Jack stepped away from the edge. “For all I know, your friends could be in on this. They could be in there waiting to ambush me. This could be you making sure the virus gets to London.”

Otto backed away, grabbing for a handle on the side of the jet. “Jack we don't have time–” 

“My job is to fight villains, not help them. You've done nothing but try to deceive me from the moment we met. What are you leaving out this time? What else are you hiding?” 

Otto could feel Jack getting ready to make another attack. But before he could do it, Otto threw the jet into a steep climb. He clung to the handle as his feet slipped out from underneath him. Jack, on the other hand, tumbled unceremoniously out the hatch, arms pinwheeling, a look of shock plastered to his face.

“Don't blame them if they try to kill you!” Otto shouted after him, pulling the jet level again. “I'll pick you up when it's clean and explain everything!”


	12. Grievances

Jack's tumbling free fall was angry and short. He barely had any time to be infuriated at Otto for throwing him out of a plane before he landed with a thud on the roof of another one. Villain or not, kid had good aim.

Jack used what power he could to keep himself from flying right off the ship, but he still couldn’t reach the more elaborate mechanics. Otto hadn’t been lying about the electromagnetic shielding. Plus it wasn't exactly easy to focus while hanging on for dear life from a very sleekly designed aircraft. 

Jack took a deep breath. He glanced up at the white jet as it leveled out above him. He didn’t know if Otto was lying about the virus in this ship. He didn’t know if he could trust anything Otto had said in their whole time together. Part of him wanted to reach up and take control of the jet he’d just been dumped out of and send it straight to the ocean. How could he have let himself be so fooled to think that a villain could be his friend?

He clenched his fist around the handle to the hatch as the wind screamed past him. He’d believed in Otto from the beginning, even when he probably shouldn’t have, and now Otto had betrayed that trust. So much about Otto made sense now that Jack knew he was a villain, but yet there was just as much that made even less sense. Why would he save the Imagine Nation when he could have easily destroyed it? Why would he bother to go on, what at least very much appeared to be, a mission to save the whole world? Why, despite everything, was he still just so genuinely, infuriatingly likeable?

Jack swallowed his doubts and fear until they formed a hard lump in his stomach. Once he opened the hatch, one of two things could happen: 1. Otto’s villain friends would reveal that they knew about the virus all along, that this was truly all part of some elaborate scheme, that Otto truly was terrible through and through, and then they’d kill him or 2. Otto’s villain friends would have no idea about the virus, proving that Otto had been telling the truth, that he really was decent, and then they’d still probably kill him. 

Either way, he was going in. Not like he had a choice. 

He threw open the hatch and dropped into the Shroud. A swift punch to the gut greeted him before his feet even hit the floor. As he collapsed backward, he glanced up to see a ponytailed Chinese boy cracking his knuckles. It was one of the kids who had been with Otto at the museum. 

Behind the boy with the scary eyes the Shroud cockpit waited, exactly how Otto pictured it for him. In it, two girls he also recognized from the museum turned around in their seats and glared.

“Wait wait, Otto sent me! I'm here to help!” Jack held up his hands in defense, even though at present it felt more like Otto sent him down here to get his butt handed to him. Yet inside the jet, the shield wasn’t blocking him anymore and he could feel the virus teeming through the mechanics. Otto hadn’t been lying about that either. 

The Chinese kid’s face changed at the mention of Otto’s name– a flash of deep concern quickly replaced by an even more pointed anger.

“Where is he? What have you done with him?”

“I can explain-- I just need to plug something in your jet first–” Jack started getting up slowly, hoping that just maybe they’d go along with it.

But of course they didn’t. The boy grabbed for him with deadly speed. Jack barely rolled out of the way as he made a dash for the cockpit. The blonde girl moved to block him, spreading her arms across the cockpit door, complete with a smirk.

“Not so fast, Mr. Cool Scar.” 

“Sorry about this. Well, sort of,” Jack used his powers to bank the Shroud hard, sending both of his attackers rolling sideways and crashing into various dropship tactical gear. In the opening it gave him, he dove for the cockpit and whipped out the cure card. Just as he was about to jam it in the slot, he felt the cold metal of a gun on the back of his neck.

“Not another move,” the other girl seethed from where she sat behind the controls.

Jack raised his hands slowly, glancing back at her in the corner of his eye. “I swear I'm doing this for Otto. He'll tell you himself if you just–”

“Don't you dare use Otto against me,” she spat, “And don't think I don't know who you are. You're the kid from the museum. You're the one who kidnapped Otto. And I swear I will pull this trigger if the next words out of your mouth aren't exactly how to get him back.”

“Sorry,” he said, closing his eyes.

The girl watched in shock as the gun fell to pieces in her hands. Jack opened his eyes and lunged again for the card port but the girl leapt at him, knocking the card from his hands and onto the floor where it skidded out of reach.

Then with a crackle the radio came to life. Jack’s face fell in horror.

“Shroud this is Raven. Care to explain why you thought you could get away with following me to London?”

Out the front window, Jack watched as the London skyline grew larger and larger. Little did it know that a world-ending virus had just been transmitted into its heart.

“Oh no,” he whispered.

Jack rolled to the floor, taking the red haired girl kicking and fighting with him. He scooped up the card and in one decisive motion shoved it in the card slot. A few painfully slow heartbeats later, the cure code activated and he felt it wipe the Shroud clean in one swoop. He breathed a sigh of momentary relief.

His moment of victory was cut short by the Chinese boy tackling him from behind. His face slammed into the dash controls, thankfully right next to the radio speaker. He switched the channel with a thought. 

“Otto, please tell your friends not to kill me!”

The boy pressed a hand into his windpipe. Jack started to see spots. Maybe it really had been a trap all along. He couldn’t really have expected to survive being thrown into a jet of villains, could he? 

“Otto…” he choked out. As mad as he was at Otto for lying, a part of him still believed that the Otto he’d come to know- the one he trusted with his life- was real, and would be there to save him one more time.

A moment later the radio fizzed back. 

“Jack? You there?” Otto’s voice came through, “Wing, Shelb, Laura- if you can hear me, you can stop restraining him now.”

“Otto?” Wing slowly released Jack, still wary. Jack rubbed the side of his face as he stood up. That’d be a bruise tomorrow.

“Otto where are you?” Laura grabbed the radio with a frantic urgency.

“Right here!”

The white jet nearly collided with them as it pulled down beside the Shroud. From behind its controls, the members of the Shroud cockpit could see clear as day-- Otto waving, a ridiculous grin on his face.

“Oh thank god you're okay,” Laura said into the radio. “We- we thought the worst when you disappeared again, you know.”

“Yeah. Sorry about that,” Otto replied, “But first-- Jack, is the cure online and operational?”

“Ship’s all clean.” Jack leaned into the radio, dodging still-wary glances from the rest of the crew. “But there was a transmission before I could plug in the cure.”

“Oh no.” Otto’s smile vanished.

“The transmission? You mean Raven? Otto what is he talking about?” Laura practically shouted.

“Laura, is Raven at HIVE?” 

“No, she's here in London. Why?”

Otto cursed under his breath. “Block all outside contact from now on.”

Jack took the radio back. “Otto the virus–” Jack said with a hint of despair, looking out at the city as it grew larger on the horizon, “We don't have much time.”

“I know. Head for the city-- look for the tower with all the satellite dishes,” Otto said, “I’ve got an idea.” 

Jack had a hunch where Otto was going with this. “You think it will be powerful enough?” he asked.

“It's gonna have to be.”


	13. Differences

The HIVE kids watched with confusion, along for the ride as Jack grabbed the controls and turned the Shroud toward the heart of the city. 

Minutes later, both jets landed on the roof of London’s most powerful communications tower– a tight fit but there was no time for alternatives. Jack rushed out of the Shroud to find Otto where he already stood at the edge of the circular rooftop, right above the impressive array of satellites jutting out from the circumference of building’s exterior below.

Otto's friends ran toward him but he held up a hand as if to tell them to hang back. He turned straight to Jack, his face a mask of determination. Gone was the kid who didn’t take anything seriously, but this also wasn’t the scary-eyed boy who intimidated Smart. Jack wondered if he was finally seeing the real Otto. A villain by every classical definition of the word. But a villain who was trying very desperately to save the world.

The hard lump of betrayal in his stomach began to dissipate. He still hadn’t forgiven Otto for deceiving him. But he couldn’t stay mad at him. Not now.

“How far has the virus spread?” Otto asked as Jack took his place beside him at the edge of the roof. 

Jack focused for a moment. He could feel the virus code as it worked its way throughout the city, more aggressive now, corrupting every electronic system it touched. It was moving fast. Too fast. It was already moving beyond London. Another five minutes and it would be in every machine on the globe. He swallowed nervously. “Edge of the city. And spreading fast. The cure–” 

“Too slow.” Otto let his face fall for a moment, thinking. “We have to stop the spread.”

“And how are we supposed to do that?”

“Let’s make it go dark.” A devious glint snuck into Otto’s otherwise distressed eyes.

“You mean turn off all the electronics in London? Can we really do that?” Jack asked, looking out at the horizon. He’d never attempted something quite this big before. But if they didn’t hurry, it would get a whole lot bigger.

“We did manage to kill the power to most of your island, albeit not totally on purpose.” Otto shrugged his shoulders, managing a smile despite everything. “You supply the brute power, I’ll add a bit of finesse, smash ‘em both together again and Bob’s your uncle.” 

Jack couldn’t believe that Otto could still be so flippant with what they were about to attempt. But it wasn’t like they had another choice, impossible or not. He took a deep breath and tried to quash his nerves.

A short laugh escaped from his stomach like an exasperated bark.

Otto raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“It’s nothing, just… it’s happening again.” Jack stepped away from Otto, casting a wary glance back at his three waiting friends. “This is insane. Why do I keep trusting you? I know for sure now that I was wrong about you.”

Otto’s eyes shifted, his expression a mix of worry and hurt and guilt. “Look. I know you have every reason to not to believe me. But you weren’t wrong about me. You trusted the Otto you knew from before. And right now, if we’re going to save this city and the world then you’re gonna have to trust me again.”

Otto extended a hand, looking up at Jack, pleading.

“I’m not a bad guy,” he said, barely above a whisper. “Well, y’know. It’s complicated.” He flashed his standard cockney grin like he couldn’t help it.

Jack clenched his jaw. “Okay. Fine. Let’s do it.”

Otto’s smile widened. “Perfect. You know what to do.” 

Otto waved Jack over with a little gesture and Jack put his hand on Otto's shoulder. He reached out for the device in Otto’s head like he had multiple times now, still uncertain that this plan would work.

Jack connected with Otto gingerly, the intimacy of the experience still a pretty heady leap of faith. This time felt entirely different though. This time, Otto didn’t block him out. This time, neither of them fought for control. It was a strangely familiar sensation even now that there was no more battle. Now it was just both of their strange abilities, so similar but yet each unique, and the full potential of each of their capabilities at one another’s full disposal. It was one of the most exhilarating things that Jack had ever felt.

“Ready?” Jack asked, one last time, even though he didn’t need to. He could feel Otto’s confidence flowing through their connection. It helped him bury the last of his doubts. 

“Kill it.”

Jack nudged his influence outward. Then the world shifted.

The massive lighted display on the communications building was the first to go. It glitched and blinked dark, followed by a waterfall of darkness as everything electronic lost power down the tower. The cascade continued to the next building, and the next, slowly at first but gaining speed. Whole swaths of the city fell dark and silent around them in mere seconds, the falling twilight only making their handiwork all the more visible as it spread further and further. 

Jack couldn’t feel his feet. He couldn’t feel anything really, except for his hand on Otto’s shoulder and the circuitry of hundreds of thousands of machines as their influence swept through them like a tidal wave. He didn’t quite know what he’d been expecting, but it hadn’t been this. Otto had been right about the effect that combining their powers would have. But neither of them could have known just how huge the difference would be. 

Jack couldn’t help but be impressed at how quickly darkness fell upon the city beneath them, and strangely he knew Otto felt the same. The linking of their powers had a few unexpected side effects, one of which seemed to be total emotional transparency. And that wasn’t all. 

Thoughts and memories started flowing freely between them. All his secrets and struggles and trials– the lengths he’d gone to in order to protect his friends, how he’d put everyone in danger by refusing to die knowing full well what he’d become, the truth about Revile– now Otto knew them too. 

At the same time, the fullness of Otto’s life came to focus for him as well. How, despite his school’s name and unusual teachings, he’d put his life on the line to stop villains much worse than him. How he’d been the unfortunate pawn of circumstance so many times. How truly similar they really were. 

Jack’s thoughts swirled with shame and doubt and relief. Otto’s thoughts echoed his own, like looking into a mental mirror. 

As they spread their influence farther, farther than either of them had ever managed alone, it started getting harder to tell where Jack ended and Otto began. The power was a rush like he'd never felt, not even during his brief stint as Revile. He felt the smallest twinge of apprehension, a passing wonder whether it was right to feel this good about all this power, but he couldn't even tell if that minor regret was his own or Otto's, or if it even mattered. 

They killed everything electronic on the whole island, and then pressed out further, through the ocean and onto the mainland. Even though they still stood there on the top of the building they could also feel every light, every vehicle, every signal that went dark. OttoJack felt it as the last of the virus-ridden electronics went dark, but he didn't stop. He wondered if he could keep going. He wondered if he could make every light in Europe turn off. He wondered if he could make the whole world go dark. And he was about to try.

 _Smack_. A slap hit him across the cheek.

Then Jack and Otto remembered how to breathe. They heaved in gasps of air in tandem.

Otto- just Otto- rubbed his face, the sting of the smack still burning. He blinked as his eyes refocused and saw Laura staring him down with fire in her eyes, her hand raised and ready to strike again. 

“Ouch,” he said, remembering how to speak.

Laura lowered her hand. “You both weren't breathing. Figured we should help.”

“Thanks.” Otto turned to Jack with a grin. They shared a look– thankfully, just a look– that expressed multitudes. 

“Would one of you do the kindness of explaining to the rest of us what the hell just happened?” Shelby walked over to them, hands on her hips.

Jack raised his hands in defeat. “You take this one.”

“Gee thanks. Well. Where to start?” Otto said, running an absentminded hand through his hair.

“Maybe why every light in London is dead?” Shelby said.

“And possibly half of France too.” Wing chimed in, raising an eyebrow as he appraised a display on his Blackbox.

Otto took a deep breath. “Okay basically there was a virus in that thing we stole that was going to gank the world worse than Overlord. It infected all the HIVE tech, and when Raven radioed you guys it started infecting London too. So we killed all the lights in London to stop the spread and now,” he moved to look out over the edge at the collection of giant satellite dishes, “We're gonna broadcast the antidote.”

“ _We're_?” Laura’s tone was full of skepticism pointed directly at a certain kid who’d more or less hijacked their dropship.

“Oh yeah.” Otto turned around. “Guys, this is Jack. Jack- guys. He's got abilities just like mine. He sort of wanted to put me in jail but now he doesn't. Especially after we get this cure in the airwaves, right?” 

Jack rolled his eyes with a smile. “Right. Let's do it.”

“Perfect,” Otto said with a toothy half-grin. “I'll send the cure code from the Shard to the satellite array. You boost the power so it hits all the infected stuff. Should be as simple as that.”

And it was. Otto and Jack worked in complete sync, Otto linking the Shroud’s systems with the tower’s to send the cure code across, and Jack acting as the generator that told the satellites to broadcast the code to every device continuously. They worked with an easy harmony, as if there had been no bad blood between them. As if they were old friends.

As they finished, London's lights started coming back on, virus free. Jack and Otto stood side by side at the edge of the building, watching as patches of the city flickered back to life. 

“So. Did it work?” Otto asked.

Jack smiled. “Yeah. It did.”

Otto leaned on the barrier wall, finally letting himself have a moment of relief. Beside him, Jack did the same. For a moment, Jack looked as if he was about to say something, but he closed his mouth without saying it. Otto didn’t blame him. What more was there left to say?

As the cure code thrummed through the airwaves around them, Otto felt the memories of Jack’s he had shared while they were linked fading, and he suspected that the same was happening for Jack. Their combined experiences were too much for one brain to hold, as it turned out. And, as bits and pieces of the remaining shreds of Jack’s memories flared and faded away, Otto could tell why. He’d been through some pretty rough stuff. They both had. 

But, now that there were no secrets between them, neither of them had to bear it alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *shows up a year late with a new chapter*
> 
> Hey. So remember when I said with the first chapter (a year and a bit ago) that this fic would be a quick thing, basically uploaded entirely before the end of 2015? Well, we all know how that went.
> 
> It's been a weird year huh? Shortly after I uploaded the first chapter of this fic, I went through a lot of really good, big life changes, the repercussions and ripples of which I haven't stopped dealing with until about a month ago. I've found that in "grown up" time a year isn't really all that long but still I (thankfully) feel like a pretty different person than I was a year ago.
> 
> I guess you, dear reader, should take heart that even one year later I'm still weirdly dedicated to finishing this thing. I mean, I certainly do.


	14. Similarities

“Otto. We should get home,” Laura said as the HIVE gang started moving back toward the Shroud.

“Everybody's worried about you, brain boy. You should hear some of the rumors going around this time.” Shelby added.

Otto chuckled. “Yeah. I'd like that. But it’s up to Jack.” 

“What.” Laura said, deadpan.

“Technically I'm his prisoner right now,” Otto admitted. Jack shot him a look of disbelief. He couldn’t be serious.

Shelby punched a fist into her palm. “Well that can be fixed.” 

Otto raised his hands in defense. “I'd rather it not come to fisticuffs. After all, I think I've earned my freedom.” Otto looked to Jack, a playful hopefulness written on his face.

Jack sighed. Obviously he couldn’t stand a chance alone against all four of them, so even if he had wanted to stop them he couldn’t have. But that was just the thing– he didn’t want to stop them. 

Jack tried to wrap his head around what to do next. He didn’t stand a chance against the four of them together, not that he really wanted to fight them anyway. Could he really just let Otto go though, after learning who and what he truly was?

He frowned. “There's still the artifact.”

“We've got the cure code in the Shroud,” Otto replied quickly, “That'll wipe HIVE clean. After that we can lock the bugger up for good.”

“You mean you'll keep it?” Jack asked, skeptical.

“Well we can't exactly just put it back in the museum now, can we? It'll be just as safe on my island as it would be on yours.”

Jack considered for a moment. Losing the artifact would be hard to explain to his friends in the Imagine Nation without also explaining the whole Otto situation, which would surely be a royal mess no matter how they took it. But at the same time, bringing a Rustov artifact home might be even more disastrous. Who knows what it might do if it accidentally came in contact with any lingering Rustov tech on the Imagine Nation? If it did, Jack feared that he wouldn’t be able to contain it. Not alone.

“Fine. Alright. I believe you.” Jack said, finally.

Otto looked thoroughly surprised. “You do?”

“Yeah, I do,” he replied with a small smile.

“Well I guess that's it then.” Otto smiled back but it didn’t reach his eyes. 

The HIVE kids waited expectantly by their ship behind Otto and Jack realized all of a sudden that this was goodbye. He should have been glad, especially now that he’d essentially closed the case on the mystery that was Otto Malpense and saved the world in the process. That was what he’d set out to do, after all. He could go back to his life now. 

He didn’t move from where he stood.

Otto turned away and called out to his friends. “Saddle up guys, we've got a lot of HIVE tech to go fix. Does Raven need a lift?”

The HIVE gang made their way back to the Shroud in good spirits. Otto ushered them all on board before turning back over his shoulder. Jack looked up at him from the edge of the roof, where he still stood, all alone. 

“Hey. Don't just stand there looking glum,” Otto shouted back as the Shroud hummed to life.

The rush of wind from the engines ruffled Jack’s hair. He made a snap decision.

“You could come back to Imagine Nation with me,” he shouted back to Otto over the growing roar, “Not as my prisoner, I mean. You know, if you wanted.”

Otto smiled a familiar crooked smile. “You trying to convert me to the good side, Jack Blank?”

“Maybe,” Jack replied.

“Well in that case, I'll extend an invite to you to come back with us to HIVE. I was wrong about you. With the right angle on your resume, you're a shoe-in.”

He shook his head with a chuckle. They both knew that they were kidding themselves here. 

“Are you sure?” Jack said, “The Imagine Nation's really not a bad place to live when you aren’t trying to escape from and/or break it. Well except for the fact that I'm probably a wanted criminal again now thanks to all the damage we caused.” He was only half joking.

“Hmm. That gives me an idea.” Otto outstretched a hand toward the Imagine Nation jet for a moment, concentrating. “There. That should do it.”

“Do what?” Jack asked.

“Just tell that message to play when you get home. You'll see.”

Jack could only imagine what Otto had done now. But, funnily enough, he couldn’t wait to find out. 

Laura’s voice called out from the cockpit. “Otto. Are you getting in the ship or not?” 

“Yeah yeah, just take us up I’ll be right in,” Otto shouted back, waving a hand.

The Shroud started to rise. Otto held on from the back bay door. Jack looked up at him, cupped his hands around his mouth to shout.

“Don't go stealing more stuff you're not supposed to. I won't be able to cover for you again, you know. Not that our paths are likely to cross again anyway.” Jack gave him a knowing look.

“Oh don't worry Jack. Turns out the world-- well the world that matters anyway-- is very small. I'm sure we'll be seeing each other again.” 

Otto gave Jack a little wave before he receded into the Shroud and the bay door closed behind him. Jack watched from the rooftop as it vanished into the clouds. 

He thought about following them. If he was really a hero, he would have. He could find the location of perhaps the largest supervillain organization in the world. He could expose them and even lead the Imagine Nation in taking them down. But he wouldn’t. Because Jack wasn’t a hero. And Otto definitely wasn’t a villain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it this is the last chapter before the epilogue, can you believe it? I certainly can't. It's weird that I wrote most of these words over a year ago and they're only now (with today's edits) getting up here. I'm glad. 
> 
> Thanks, as always, for reading.


	15. EPILOGUE - Part One: Otto

Otto sent the cure code to the HIVE as soon as it was in range. He couldn’t risk getting infected again now that Jack wasn’t there to stop him from glitching out. But he didn’t need to worry, the cure code worked both to clean the HIVE and to announce his homecoming. 

Otto turned to his friends. “So I guess I should ask if this was a sanctioned rescue mission. Just to know how peeved Nero is gonna be when we get out of this ship.”

“Oh we totally stole the Shroud,” Shelby said, completely serious.

“Raven may have accidentally on purpose left some of the security measures unchecked after she dumped us back here,” Laura chimed in, “Nero prohibited her from bringing us out to search for you, so we improvised.”

“I don’t know why I bothered to even ask.” Otto cracked a grin as he coaxed the Shroud into landing position over the hangar bay doors. 

As predicted, Nero was waiting for them in the hangar when they arrived. He stood at the entrance, arms folded behind his back as the gang disembarked out the back ramp.

“Good to see you here safe again, Mr. Malpense,” Nero said as they approached, Raven trailing close behind. “Raven has explained that you arrived in London after an extended period of time MIA, and then proceeded to cause the most major modern blackout the city has ever seen. Do you deny it?” 

Otto did his best not to shrink under Nero’s stern gaze. “Nope.”

Nero raised a sharp eyebrow. “Care to add any color to this recounting of events?”

“Not really.” Otto locked eyes with his teacher for a tense moment. “It was a pretty standard kidnap and escape scenario. Unaffiliated to any organization. The blackout was a necessary precaution, but everything is restored to as it was.”

A charged tension lingered a beat longer while Otto silently pleaded for Nero to not press the issue any further. Finally, Nero let out a sigh. “In any other circumstance, your actions provide more than enough grounds for expulsion. However, seeing as you were on special assignment on behalf of the school and said mission’s objective was ultimately achieved, I’m willing to overlook your most grievous offenses.” A hint of a bemused smile tugged at Nero’s lips as the four of them let themselves relax. 

“Instead, you’ll be serving remedial hours on protocol and security procedures for the remainder of the year.”

The group let out a collective groan. But nobody argued. Extra class, no matter how tedious, was leagues better than getting booted out of HIVE. 

Nero ushered them out of the hangar, the heavy door sliding shut with a thunk behind them as they walked back into the depths of HIVE proper.

“Nice to know Nero’s still playing favorites,” Shelby said with a smirk, giving Otto’s shoulder a playful shake. “How would we get away with anything without you around?” 

“Oh please. I wasn’t even gone that long this time,” Otto replied.

“Still,” Laura said, stepping up next to him, “It’s nice to have you back.”

That made him smile. It was nice to be back. The more he was away from HIVE the more it felt like his home. His smile faded just slightly as he remembered he couldn’t get too comfortable just yet. There was still a few last bits of business to take care of. He’d made promises he intended to keep, after all.

\- - -

Step one was restoring HIVEmind to his usual home. 

Otto had left his friends at accommodation block seven, rushing out the door before any of them could question where he was going. Not that he wasn’t glad to be with them again, this was just something he preferred to do alone. 

Down in HIVEmind’s data hub, Otto put his hand on the white pillar in what now was a very familiar gesture and transferred HIVEmind back to his home. 

“There,” he said as the process finished and he removed his hand, “Back home again.” 

HIVEmind’s floating wireframe head appeared a moment later above the pillar. “Otto, I have noticed that you haven’t told you friends nor Dr. Nero the details of the past 48 hours. I’m curious, do you intend to keep the existence of the Imagine Nation a secret from them?”

Otto stepped back in surprise. Big Blue certainly didn’t beat around the bush.

“It’s not my secret to tell,” Otto replied, casting his eyes away for a moment before giving HIVEmind a pointed look. “And I was hoping that you would keep it on the down low as well.”

“I must admit that was my intent, but seeing as deception goes against my programming, it might prove difficult.”

“Just let me know if I need to shift some things around in there to keep prying eyes away. It might be safer just to wipe it completely.” Otto extended his hand toward the pillar again.

“No,” HIVEmind said, and Otto curled his fingers away. “I would like to retain my memories if at all possible.”

“Yeah I figured,” Otto sighed. “It certainly was memorable. I’m sorry about ruining your chance at, well, having a body-- a life-- of your own. What Virtua was offering…”

“Do not apologize, Otto. Her offer was very tempting and though I am very curious as to what life as a mecha could have been like, my place is here at HIVE, just as much as it is yours.”

Otto ran a hand through his hair. That much seemed obvious. So why couldn’t he tamper down his lingering curiosity? He didn’t actually wish that he’d taken Jack up on his offer, right?

“Yeah. You’re right,” Otto said, turning to leave the data hub. “It’ll just be our secret.”

– - -

That night, Otto snuck himself and Wing into the Professor’s lab. Tampering with the HIVE’s security system felt comforting in its predictability as Otto flipped the lock on the door to the lab’s inner chamber. Just as he predicted (and felt), the artifact was there, clamped to one of the Professor’s machines, a faint ominous glow emanating from its core. Otto could feel the virus still inside, struggling against the cure code dampening it. It sent chills down his spine.

“Alright. You grab it then,” Otto whispered to Wing.

Wing raised an eyebrow. “You brought me along just to be your courier?”

“I have a feeling that if I touch that thing the virus will get back in my head. And if that happens, we’re toast.” 

Wing grabbed the seal and unceremoniously freed it from its cradle with a jerk. Otto took a wary step back, lips pursed. 

“Alright. Where are we taking it?” Wing asked.

“Somewhere where no one will ever find it again.”

– - -

Deep in the bowels of the restricted section of HIVE they stopped at an intimidating door.

“What is this place?” Wing asked.

“A storage vault of sorts, from what the schematics say at least,” Otto replied, placing a hand on the security pad. “Let’s find out.”

Otto tried to open it, but the lock was tougher than any other he’d encountered at HIVE. 

He frowned. “HIVEmind? A little help?

HIVEmind’s quiet voice emitted from the keypad. “Otto, this level of restricted access is not–”

“HIVEmind.” Otto stopped him. “Aren’t we past all this whole ‘restricted access’ business yet?”

HIVEmind hesitated, considering. Wing looked down the corridor, antsy.

“Fine. But only because the artifact requires adequate storage. And this location is the most secure possibility.”

The door clicked open.

“Though so.” Otto pushed it inward, revealing the trove within. The room was small and filled with shelves of miscellany, everything from leather briefcases to metal lockboxes, strange weaponry to thick aging books-- a storage closet for villainous refuse, and the perfect hiding place for the seal. 

“Whoa,” Wing whispered as they entered.

Otto found an empty lockbox and cleared a spot on a shelf near the back corner. Wing gingerly placed the seal inside as Otto pulled out a transmitter nearly identical to the one Jack had initially used to transmit the cure code, just smaller.

“That’s what keeping that thing in check?” Wing asked, dubious.

“Yep,” Otto said, attaching the transmitter, ever so gently, to the artifact. Then he pulled out his blackbox. “HIVEmind, can you isolate the cure code broadcast to this room only? Otherwise Nero and the Professor might get really suspicious.”

“Done,” HIVEmind replied a moment later.

“And can you keep broadcasting it ad infinitum?”

“Of course.”

“Good,” Otto sighed, finally letting himself feel truly at ease for perhaps the first time since he’d been back. “Then I’d say our work here is done.”

The pair left the storage closet, shutting the heavy door tight behind them.

“Oh and one more thing HIVEmind.” Otto gave the AI a mental nudge to make sure he was listening. “I think it would be in our best interest if this room were to ‘not exist’, per se. Just in case of the highly unlikely situation that any other student on this island tries to go poking their nose where they don’t belong.”

“I’ve wiped it from all digital records.”

“Perfect.”

It wasn’t until they were back in their room that Wing finally said something.

“So are you going tell Nero what really happened?”

The question came as a surprise. Lying in their respective beds once again, Otto believed he’d gotten himself off the hook. He had done, at least by his standards, a spectacular job at dodging his friends’ questions the whole ride back, enough to demonstrate that it wasn’t worth probing into any further.

He should have known better than to expect his best friend to just let it lie though.

“No. He doesn’t need to know what happened.” Otto could feel Wing’s stare but he didn’t dare look back.

“Otto… what did really happen?”

Otto rolled to face the wall, halfheartedly feigning sleep.

“Otto?”

He closed his eyes and brushed his fingers over the spot by his eye where the Rustov mark had been. It wasn’t that he couldn’t trust Wing with the secrets he’d learned, it was that he couldn’t find the way to admit to them. He found himself thinking of the Imagine Nation, curiosity still burning through him hotter than he expected, and he found himself thinking of Jack. 

Trying to recall specific details from Jack’s life now was like drifting through a foggy haze, but some things still stuck out in perfect clarity: visions of the island, his love for his home and the wonder it inspired, his love for his friends and his dedication to protect them. Otto resisted the urge to dwell on these non-memories, willing them away before he got too deep.

If he hadn’t been so (understandably) focused on escaping the Imagine Nation, maybe he would have seen more of Jack’s island. He wondered, if the virus hadn’t necessitated their return to the real world, if perhaps he would have stayed there a little longer.

But as his life at HIVE pressed on, Otto would let his own memories of the Imagine Nation fade because they had to. He had his own life to live, a life he tried to run from in the past but the life he’d chosen for himself now. He couldn’t let those thoughts distract him, thoughts of another impossible island out there somewhere on the other side of the ocean, of another boy with extraordinary powers. 

Yet he found himself in quiet moments listening through the HIVE network to that little string of alien code repeating over and over. Only checking to make sure it was still working, he’d tell himself. A precautionary measure. But truthfully, he listened to it every once in a while just to remember.


	16. EPILOGUE - Part Two: Jack

Jack attempted to access Otto's message as soon as the jet was in the air. 

He was surprised (well, not really that surprised) to be pinged with a cacophony of gibberish code that made his head hurt, followed by a digitized recreation of Otto’s voice that emitted from a screen in the middle of the controls.

“Had a feeling you might jump the gun on that one. Still don’t trust me, huh Jack? Well, I don’t blame you. Really it’s probably for the best that you don’t. Don’t worry though. The real message is still here, just time locked, set to broadcast as soon as you get back home. You’ll know what to do. I think you’ll like it.”

Jack reclined in his seat, shaking his head. Just when he thought he’d seen the last of Otto’s tricks, that kid just couldn’t help himself. He settled in for the rest of the ride, curiosity simmering all the while.

As expected, Jonas Smart awaited Jack at the hangar upon his return, accompanied by a battalion of security bots. No sooner had Jack deplaned than he was assailed by a red-faced onslaught of Smart’s acute wrath.

“Security, arrest this boy at ONCE under the charges of trespass, property damage, breaking and entering, and aircraft grand larceny,” Smart railed.

“Nice to see you too Jonas.” 

Smart whipped out his holo-tablet. “I have evidence, Blank, hard evidence.” At the poke of a finger, the tablet displayed a series of security videos: his and Otto’s escapades in Smart’s lab, their mishaps in Smart’s basement, culminating in a blurry shot of them in the cockpit of Smart’s jet. “Not to mention that I will find the link between you and the earlier communications black out, don’t you think--”

 _ZZZT!_ A sharp buzzing cut off Smart and before Jack could get in a word edgewise a new image flashed onto the holoscreen: Otto’s face, digitally constructed out of code, smiling a familiar wicked smile.

“Hello Smart,” digital Otto began, his tone chillingly serious and all too reminiscent of when turned on Smart back in the tower, “I’d like to thank you for doing such an excellent job at detaining Jack Blank. Your tireless pursuit of him has given me ample time to really get to know your network. He tried to stop me with those little shut downs, but now? Now I’ve seized the whole system.”

Jack didn’t hide his shock. _This_ was Otto’s message, the one he said would fix everything? Dead-eyed digital Otto continued:

“You think Jack’s pathetic powers are a threat? Try this on for size: the entirety of the Imagine Nation’s network-- all your secrets, all your capabilities, and yes, your location-- sent throughout the entire world. Free to the public. The world governments. Their armies. The Imagine Nation is over.”

Digital Otto leaned forward, his face nearly filling the screen. He seemed to be staring right at Jack now. With two fingers, he gave a little salute-wave, just like the one he’d done when they’d parted ways, and winked. “Good luck.”

Smart’s face collapsed in horror as every screen around him turned blue and filled with gibberish code. Jack felt Otto’s code spread through the Imagine Nation network and his stomach dropped–- it seriously was seizing the communications systems. Otto really was actually going to broadcast the location of the Imagine Nation to the world. 

Not that Jack was just going to sit back and let him do it. 

Smart poked frantically at his tablet. “I’m locked out of all communications! I’ve got no control over anything! Who is that boy?!”

Jack knew Otto wouldn’t do something like this. He couldn’t, not after everything they had just been through, right? 

Jack swallowed and chose his next words very carefully. “This is what he was planning all along,” he said, his voice wavering with doubt. “I-I fought him off in your tower and in Machina. London was a distraction. He must have planted the code while I was gone so I couldn’t stop it.” A lie, of course, to protect himself. Or at least he hoped.

“Well can you stop it now?” Smart demanded.

“Yeah. Probably. I don’t know.”

“But who is he? How did he do this?” 

Jack set his jaw. “His name is Otto. And he’s a supervillain.”

Shock splayed across Smart’s face. Jack knew he’d have to explain that one in more detail later. 

An ominous countdown clock popped up on the screen. 4:59, 4:58, 4:57-- seconds flashing away as Jack felt the waves of code streaming through the system. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Could Otto get any more dramatic?

Smart, meanwhile, bought it. “How do we stop this?!” he screamed, waving his arms wildly.

“I can do it. I just need to get somewhere that has a lot of communications tech. Smart Tower!” Jack looked to Smart sheepishly.

Smart scowled. “No way am I letting you near my technology again.”

“Please Smart. It’s that or have the secret of the Imagine Nation blown forever.”

He stewed for a moment more before giving in. “Fine. But you don’t touch anything without permission.”

\- - -

The drive to the tower revealed two things: first, that Otto’s code had indeed spread island-wide. Countdown clocks displayed on every screen, meaning that his message must have broadcast everywhere too. Second, that Otto had made it so when Jack tried to kill the electronics as they’d done in London, it wouldn’t stop the signal from spreading the moment they were back online. This one he’d have to disable from the inside out. He cursed Otto for playing to the weaker side of his powers--he knew that Jack wasn’t as good at manipulating the minute details of code like this. But now Jack had no choice. 

Stationed at the main communications control for the tower in a room off of Smart’s office, Jack probed his way into the code, struggling to keep it all straight in his head. He had to stretch his powers just to get this deep, and attempting to pin down what he had to do to stop it was proving to be quite a challenge. Maybe too much of a challenge. Maybe this wasn’t a bluff and Otto really was going to dismantle the Imagine Nation, even after everything. 

Jack pressed deeper into the code. How to fix it? How to stop it? 

“Well? Can you stop it?” Smart’s grating voice crashed through his focus. Jack could practically feel Smart breathing down his neck.

“Working on it,” he replied through gritted teeth.

Smart typed away on his personal computer. “It’s reached the external communication systems. Thirty seconds to broadcast. Do you want to doom us all?”

Jack felt a flash of panic. Code swam rapidly past his mind’s eye, a dizzying whirlpool as he scanned it for some trigger, some clue. He thought of Otto, somewhere out there across the ocean, and he clung desperately to the withering hope that this attack wasn’t real. That Otto put in some sort of scapegoat. But where was it? 

_Ten seconds._

He couldn’t believe it. He felt his last shreds of hope slip. Otto really had fooled him to the very last. Even after they gotten a thorough look around each other’s heads in London. Even after Jack thought that there were no more secrets between them. He felt himself about to give in to a crushing defeat--

But then he saw it. Very small and very well hidden (Otto certainly didn’t make it easy)-- there was the marker he had hoped for. A little string of the cure code bordered each side of a section of code, that-- _yes!_ \-- would trigger the whole process to stop. 

“Jack!” Smart yelled. But jack could barely hear over the rushing in his ears as he scrambled to get the code in place.

“Got it!” he shouted triumphantly, and flipped the code into place.

All the screens around him instantly went dark. A moment later, they came back online, clear of any trace of a certain teenaged supervillain. Jack let out a sigh of relief. He should have been furious at Otto for nearly actually broadcasting the Imagine Nation’s location around the world. But strangely, he wasn’t. 

He stepped back from the bank of monitors and servers and, to his great surprise, Jazen burst through the door.

“Jack! You did it!” he beamed. 

“Jazen! Where did you--” Jack trailed off as he noticed a rogue SmartCam hovering in the corner of the room, it’s recording light flashing.

“I saw what you did on the screens-- it was everywhere-- and I got over here as fast as I could,” Jazen answered his incomplete question. But Jack had already figured that much. He stepped over to the window, and there he was on all the screens in the streets below. The people cheered.

Jazen clasped a proud hand over Jack’s shoulder. “Give em a smile, Jack. You’re a hero again!”

Jack turned and gave the camera his best smile. Smart scowled behind his desk. Jazen turned to him with an overly-pleasant grin. 

“Now what was that again about detaining Jack for crimes against the Imagine Nation?”

Smart grumbled. “All charges have been dropped. He’s free to go.”

With that, the camera winked off. 

\- - -

Jazen drove Jack through the streets of Hightown, headed home. Passerbys cheered and waved, and Jack gave each a smile and a wave in return. He was a wanted criminal no more. Otto, however, had fashioned himself as public enemy Number One. 

Jazen cast Jack a gentle glance. “Too bad that white haired kid turned out to be a bad guy, huh? He seemed pretty alright.” 

Jack shifted uncomfortably in the passenger seat. Otto had saved him from taking the blame for any of the havoc they’d caused, but in the process he had made it impossible for himself to ever return to the Imagine Nation. The weight of that sat heavier in his stomach than he expected.

He knew why Otto had planted the message. It was the only way he’d be able to explain any of this to his friends, all the way back to when he stowed Otto away in their chopper. Or, as his new story would now have to go, when Otto stowed himself away in order to sabotage the Imagine Nation.

It wouldn’t be hard at all to twist the day’s events just slightly in order to make it seem like it really had been all Otto’s fault. Jack couldn’t help but smile at the irony. Otto sure was great at being a villain, even when he was being a hero.

Jack turned away. “Yeah. Too bad,” he lied. Just like Otto would have wanted.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _It’s done._ And it’s a mess (or at least today is one of the days I feel that way). But it’s _my_ mess. And, though it pales in comparison with the length of most chaptered fan fic, it is the longest complete work i’ve written so far in my life. Sheesh.
> 
> I’m so glad there were a couple other of you weird nerds who came along on this ride with me, though the ride was much longer than initially promised. Like I said a few chapters ago, I think ultimately I’m glad that I stuck with these obscure characters and this weird little story for so long. 
> 
> And, believe it or not, it doesn’t even really end here. I have an embarrassment of scraps stored up with these guys because (apparently) I don’t know when to let things go. Seems I’ve gotten in the (bad?) habit of coming back to them over and over again. Makes sense though- writing these characters was the first thing that felt good to write after a streak of particularly gloomy personal writing thoughtspirals. Heck, it’s the first thing that reminded me how to write at all, and the process of editing the joke first draft into some semblance of actual prose was maybe the best writing learning experience I’ve ever had.
> 
> In all honesty I know this little fic doesn’t warrant nearly this level of drama in a sendoff but it meant a lot to me I guess? If, by some miracle, it meant even a little bit to you reader then I feel more than satisfied that my job here is done.
> 
> Thanks for reading.
> 
> -k


End file.
